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STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 



GREEK ROMANCES 
IN ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



COLUMBIA 

UNIVERSITY PRESS 

SALES AGENTS 

NEW YORK : 

LEMCKE & BUECHNER 
3C-32 West 27TH Street 

LONDON : 

HENRY FROWDE 
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TORONTO : 

HENRY FROWDE 
25 Richmond Street, W. 



THE GREEK ROMANCES 

IN 

ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



SAMUEL LEE WOLFF 
// 



Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the 

Requirements for the Degree of 

Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty of Philosophy, 

Columbia University 



NEW YORK 

IQI2 



T^ 



? 









Copyright, 191 2 
By The Columbia University Press 

Printed from type January, 191s 

Gill 

TWUoWersitr 
JUL 26 191? 



PRESS OF 

The new era printing company 
Lancaster pa 



I 

3 



TTuV monograph has been approved by the Department of 
English and Comparative Literature in Columbia University as 
a contribution to knowledge worthy of publication. 

A. H. Thorndike, 

Secretary. 



PREFACE 

The subject of this book has not, as far as I 
know, been treated before. Though the influence 
of Greek fiction upon the fiction of the Renais- 
sance has been noticed at some length by Dunlop 
and by Professor Warren; and though Herr 
Brunhuber, Herr Oeftering, and Mr. Moody 
have observed a portion of Sidney's indebtedness 
to the Greek Romances; yet no other attempt 
has been made, I believe, to disengage the char- 
acteristics of Greek Romance and to trace them 
into English fiction of any period. The present 
attempt results in the discovery of a distinct vein 
of influence in Elizabethan literature, and in 
some interesting specific discoveries : viz., that 
Heliodorus and Longus are respectively a sec- 
ondary and a primary source of Shakespeare; 
that Lyly's " Euphues " probably occupies a place 
in a long tradition that goes back to Greek 
Romance ; and that both Sidney and Greene were 
steeped in the matter and the style of Greek fic- 
tion. The further discovery that Sidney went 
so far as to remodel his "Arcadia" upon the 
pattern of Heliodorus's narrative structure would 
have been impossible but for Mr. Dobell's find 
of manuscripts of the "Old Arcadia." To all 
my known predecessors I make grateful acknowl- 
edgment, both here and in the text. 

The present study has been confined to the five 
chief writers of Elizabethan fiction, — Lyly, Sid- 
ney, Greene, Nash, and Lodge. Minor writers 
like Sanford and Warner, even when known to 



VI 11 



have used the Greek Romances, have received 
only passing mention; nor has the Catalogue of 
the British Museum been searched for titles sug- 
gestive of Greek Romance. My bibliography, 
thus, does not profess to be complete; it was com- 
piled upon a frankly utilitarian basis, and con- 
tains very few titles not actually referred to in 
the book. With the same design of usefulness 
to the reader, the Index has been made rather full. 

I am under obligations to the authorities of 
the Libraries of Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, 
and the University of Michigan, for many cour- 
tesies. To the owner of the " Clifford " and 
" Ashburnham " Manuscripts of the "Old Ar- 
cadia," who prefers to remain unnamed, and to 
Mr. A. T. Porter of London, both of whom 
most kindly allowed me the free use of their 
property, my special acknowledgments are due. 
My friend Dr. S. M. Tucker, Professor of Eng- 
lish at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, gave 
me indispensable assistance in seeing this book 
through the press. To Professor A. H. Thorn- 
dike, of Columbia University, I am obliged for 
many excellent suggestions. 

Professor Woodberry was " the onlie begetter " 
of the studies which have at last issued in this 
book ; and my indebtedness to him is greater than 
I can express or he would own. Professor J. B. 
Fletcher, of Columbia University, has given 
freely his valuable advice and criticism, as well 
as a personal interest and encouragement without 
which my work, however auspiciously begun, 
would hardly have been completed. 

New York, November 15, 191 1. 



CONTENTS 

PART ONE 
The Greek Romances 

Chapter Pagh 

I. Introductory: General Characteristics; 

Chronology ; Analyses I 

II. Plot, Character (Humor), Setting; Struc- 
ture, Style in 

Interchapter 237 

PART TWO 
Elizabethan Prose Fiction 

I. John Lyly 248 

II. Sir Philip Sidney 262 

III. Robert Greene 367 

IV. Thomas Nash and Thomas Lodge 459 

Conclusion 461 

Appendix A. Textual notes on the relation be- 
tween Day's and Amyot's ver- 
sions of " Daphnis and Chloe " 465 

Appendix B. Notes and transcripts: " Clifford " 

Ms. of Sidney's " Arcadia "... 470 

Appendix C. Bibliographical Notes on William 
Burton's translation of Achilles 
Tatius 477 

Bibliography 483 

Index 506 



1* 



\ 



THE GREEK ROMANCES IN ELIZA- 
BETHAN PROSE FICTION 



PART ONE 

THE GREEK ROMANCES 



CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY 

General Characteristics ; Chronology ; 
Analyses 

The present study assumes the existence of the 
Greek Romances, and looks forward in time to 
their influence upon Elizabethan prose fiction. It 
is therefore concerned with their origin or evolu- 
tion only in as far as these may help to char- 
acterize the Greek Romances themselves. It 
makes no attempt to identify the borrowings of 
Achilles Tatius from Plutarch or from Aristotle, 
from Aelian or from Ovid; it cares not whether 
Heliodorus lived before or after Xenophon of 
Ephesus, or which of the two imitated the other ; 
and it waives the question whether the Greek 
Romances are an outcome of Greek historiog- 
raphy or teratology, or of Alexandrian erotic 
poetry, or of the Ionic novella, or of Oriental 



2 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

fiction, or of all. It is content with the certainty 
that all the Greek Romances were earlier than 
the writers of Elizabethan fiction, and that cer- 
tain Greek Romances were known to these 
writers. The table on pages 8-10 will show 
concisely what Romances were accessible to per- 
sons who wrote prose fiction during Queen 
Elizabeth's reign (1558-1603). It is with the 
chief of these writers, and with those Romances 
which are found to have influenced them, that 
the present study has to do. 

The long and elaborate form of Greek prose 
fiction known as the Romance was a late and 
puny child of the Hellenic imagination. It came 
into being during the decline of Greek literature, 
and found a place there only after the greater 
genres — epic, lyric, drama, oration — were dead. 
It rose, too, after the destruction of Greek 
nationality, and was not inspired, as were the 
earlier genres, by a broad communal tradition of 
religion, myth, morals, and polity. So it was at 
once individualistic — the work of writers ex- 
pressing their own fancies rather than the com- 
mon imaginative fund of the Hellenic race; and 
cosmopolitan — the work, often, of writers 
actually not Greek, but African or Asiatic, — 
writers from Pergamon, or Antioch, or Alex- 
andria. 

It came, moreover, after the schools of Alex- 
andria had given their decisive ply to the litera- 
ture that was to follow. The Alexandrian, 
whether artist or critic, emphasized the pictur- 
esque, the rhetorical, the fanciful, elements in 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 3 

both life and letters. He was interested rather 
in diversity than in unity, and cared more for a 
series of idylls or word-pictures than for an 
extensive single sustained act of creative imagi- 
nation. Theocritus (VII. 45-8) and Calli- 
machus (Epigram 30; Hymn to Apollo, 105 ff.), 
Alexandrians both, agree for instance in depre- 
cating the production of long epic poems; and 
Apollonius Rhodius, who so offended his master 
Callimachus by writing one, is held to have 
justified in that very act the opinion of Cal- 
limachus that the day of the epic was past. 2 In 
fact, the Alexandrian liked the parts better than 
the whole, and lingered to elaborate whatever 
pleased. Admitting everything that would enter- 
tain, he allowed episode, digression, irrelevancy, 
to withdraw attention from the principal theme. 
Life itself would move before him not as a 
whole, made one by law, physical or moral, but 
as a series of spectacles and emotions — " for to 
admire and for to see." In the physical world as 
interpreted by him, event does not produce event ; 
the bond of causation is loosed, and the door 

2 See Couat, " La Querelle de Callimaque et d'Apollonius 
de Rhodes," in Annuaire de V Association pour I'Encourage- 
vient des Etudes Grecques, vol. 11 (1877), p. 103 (a paper 
embodied with some changes in the last chapter of his 
" La Poesie Alexandrine ") ; Susemihl, " Geschichte der 
Griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit," I. 169, 208, 
350, 353, 384. " Die meisten alexandrinischen Dichter ver- 
schrankten sich mit richtigem Gefiihl auf Dichtungen von 
geringem Umfang, und hier gelang es ihnen wirklich noch 
manches Neue und acht Poetische zu schaffen, namentlich 
in der Schilderung individuellen Seelenlebens, in der anmu- 
tigen Darstellung zarter, sentimentaler und leidenschaft- 
licher Empfindungen." (Susemihl I. 169.) 



4 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

opened to chance. 3 In his moral world, the 
choices and decisions of life — hardly realized as 
choices or decisions at all — are lightly made, un- 
deliberated, often unmotived. Between the two 
worlds, inner and outer, there is no vital inter- 
action: human character does not affect human 
destiny, indeed scarcely affects environment; nor 
on the other hand do conduct and environment 
react upon and develop character. Sentiment, 
the inward working of emotion, does not issue in 
action, and so becomes mere sentimentality, to be 
lingered over, sipped, and degusted, for its own 
sake. And in the " world of description," the 
movements and the sounds and shows of things — 
alien to the nature of conduct, and not human- 
ized, like the classical " setting " or " back- 
ground," by the uses of man — these too are 
lingered over for their own sake, because they 
are picturesque, and take the sense with im- 
mediate pleasure. The absence of unifying in- 
teraction between the mental and the physical 
order has left the Alexandrian either engrossed 
in sentiment out of all contact with reality, or 
sunk in matter unspiritualized. 

As the links of Cause are broken, and Fortune 
takes direction of the affairs of men, events 
are no longer calculable, as they had been in any 
imaginative work based, like the Attic drama for 
example, upon the ancient myths, and exhibiting 
" the laws of the gods " ; indeed, their interest 

8 A far cry from Anaxagoras's strictly classical and sci- 
entific view that what we call " chance " is causation as yet 
unknown: alrla iv8pwflv<f Xoyicfif &8t]\os. (Diels, " Frag- 
mente," I. 306, Frag. 66.) 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 5 

comes to lie in their very incalculableness.* The 
reader's pleasure no longer consists in seeing 
law work itself inexorably out, but in being sur- 
prised, shocked, made to "sit up," by the unex- 
pectedness, the queerness of the turns things take. 
The paradoxical, the bizarre, the inconsistent, the 
self-contradictory — these were stock in trade 
with the writers of Greek Romance. 

When it is remembered, too, that these writers 
were professional rhetoricians, their hunger for 
paradox is seen to assume quite naturally a 
second phase: — it becomes a sophisticated chase 
after contrasts. The Greek Romances fairly 
bristle with pointed sentences turning over ad 
nauseam some shallow "conceited" antitheton. 
And such writers, one may be sure, were not 
too much occupied with ideas to neglect allitera- 
tion of words, parallelism and balance of the 
members of the sentence, and many another aid 
to antithesis. 

Few professional artists in language, again, 
can resist their tendency toward a conscious dis- 
play of their art. Given a world of senti- 
mentality, the sophist will expatiate upon the 
"psychology" of it, and tell his reader just how 
a certain person felt upon a given occasion, and 
why he wept, or was speechless ; or he will let the 
person himself, by means of soliloquy or tirade 

* Aristotle {Poet. IX. 11-12) recognizes the value of both 
these elements : that event, he says, is most effective, which 
is unlooked for, but at the same time strictly caused. The 
Greek Romances, in neglecting the second element, give 
undue force to the first. In fact, the " Poetics," chs. VIII 
and IX (on Plot), and VI and XV (on Character), constitute 
by anticipation the most concise and trenchant possible 
criticism of the Greek Romances. 



6 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

or letter or lamentation, set forth the conflict of 
his own feelings. Given a world of sound and 
show, the same sophist will make it the subject 
of a rhetorical set-piece; will insert (relevant or 
irrelevant, what matter?) long word-paintings, 
tours de force of descriptive writing; or he may 
go so far as to envisage the whole course of his 
plot as a succession of pictures. 5 Himself a 
talker by trade, he will rejoice in great talking- 
matches, such as grow out of trials at law; and 
will give the speeches in full. He will now and 
again enliven his page with a debat or dubbio, 
and show what can be said on each side of some 
question in aesthetics or love. 

The Greek Romances abound in such irrelevant 
or episodic matter: glittering disputations, or 
antithetical letters and monologues ; set-pieces of 
rhetorical pyrotechny; descriptions of paintings, 
statues, jewels, utensils, gardens and the like; 
narratives of local mythology, tales of marvellous 
beasts — puerile accounts of the phoenix and his 
pious son, of the elephant's sweet breath, and the 
terrifying aspect of the giraffe — with much other 
"unnatural natural history." Plot and char- 
acter, minimized and often eclipsed by such di- 
gressions and episodes, fall far too much under 
the control, respectively, of Fortune and of senti- 
mentality, which are in their turn frequently 
made the subject of lengthy tirades — Fortune 
railed upon in good set terms, sentimentality 
analyzed to death by means of a shallow and 
distorted " psychology." 

8 Cf. Andrew Lang : " Theocritus and his Age," pp. 
xxxvii, ff. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 7 

It is not here asserted that the schools of 
Alexandria originated any of the tendencies that 
are found in such exaggerated form in the Greek 
Romances. Pictorial description or word-paint- 
ing appears as early as the Shield of Achilles, 
and has a long and honorable life in Greek 
poetry; "the unexpected" we have seen recog- 
nized by Aristotle; rhetorical antithesis was the 
gist of the teaching of the early sophist Gorgias ; 
puerile marvels are not wanting in Herodotus. 
What is asserted is that Alexandria fostered all 
these tendencies together as they had never been 
fostered before, and that she transmitted them 
to those later schools which produced the 
Greek Romance. Furthermore, and this is the 
main point, these tendencies are, in the Greek 
Romance, not just combined mechanically; the 
combination rests upon a new and unclassic view 
of life, and hence of literature — a view which 
would have been abhorrent to Homer, Aristotle, 
and Herodotus, and even to Gorgias. 

The foregoing sketch — an attempt at a general 
characterization of the Greek Romance, may 
serve to introduce analyses of the three chief 
specimens of the genre: "The iEthiopica," or 
"Theagenes and Chariclea," by Heliodorus; 
"Clitophon and Leucippe," by Achilles Tatius, 
and " Daphnis and Chloe," attributed to Longus ; 
the only extant Greek Romances which are found 
to have exercised any influence upon Elizabethan 
prose fiction. Upon these analyses a more ex- 
tensive critical discussion will be based. 



THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 



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ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION II 

Heliodorus : 

^THIOPICA, OR THEAGENES AND CHARICLEA 5a 

A. The daughter of Hydaspes and Persina, 
King and Queen of Ethiopia, was born white 
(IV. viii), her mother at the moment of concep- 
tion having gazed intently upon a painting of 
white Andromeda. Persina, fearing lest this ex- 
planation should not satisfy the jealousy of her 
husband, exposed the child, who was saved (II. 
xxxi) by Sisimithres, an Ethiopian nobleman and 
gymnosophist, forbidden by his philosophical 
tenets to abandon any living thing. With the 
child he found and preserved a ring and other 
jewels (IV. viii), as well as fillets upon which 
were inscribed the reasons for her exposure. He 
had her reared by shepherds. 

When she was seven years old (II. xxx, xxxi) 
he took her with him to Catadupi — the Cataracts 
of the Nile — upon an embassy committed to him 
by Hydaspes. Oroondates, Viceroy of Egypt 
under the Great King, was disputing with 
Hydaspes the title to the City of Philae and to 
the emerald mines near it on the border between 
Egypt and Ethiopia. Sisimithres, perhaps fear- 
ing the consequences to himself and his ward 
of the uncompromising claims he must make on 
behalf of Hydaspes, entrusted the child, with her 

S *A, B, etc., designate portions of the story for con- 
venience in referring to them as wholes. Roman numerals 
designate book and chapter of the original text. 



12 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

jewels and tokens, to one Charicles, a priest of 
Apollo. As Charicles had recently lost his own 
wife and daughter (II. xxix), he had left Delphi 
to seek consolation in travel, and now happened 
to be at Catadupi. He accepted the charge (II. 
xxxii). Sisimithres's prudence was justified by 
the event, for Oroondates ordered him out of 
Catadupi at once on pain of death. [We hear 
no more of him till the very end of the story.] 
With Charicles the child returned to Delphi, re- 
ceived the name Chariclea, and herself became a 
priestess of Diana (II. xxxiii). 

B. (a) When Chariclea had arrived at mar- 
riageable age, there came to Delphi two persons — 
the Memphian Calasiris, a priest of Isis (II. 
xxvi), and Theagenes a Thessalian, a descendant 
of Achilles (II. xxxiv). Calasiris in his temple 
had been tempted by the charms of Rhodopis a 
courtesan (II. xxv), and wished to fly from the 
temptation; moreover, having divined that there 
would be a deadly combat between his sons, he 
wished to avoid the fulfilment of the prediction ; 
and, finally, he deemed Delphi an appropriate 
place of retirement for one of his priestly caste 
(II. xxvi). Theagenes had come to celebrate 
memorial rites (II. xxxiv) in honor of his an- 
cestor Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles. Having 
made friends with Calasiris, Charicles partly told 
him, and partly by showing him Chariclea's 
tokens enabled him to discover for himself (IV. 
viii), the story given in A. Further, he re- 
quested the wise Egyptian's aid (II. xxxiii) in 
persuading Chariclea to take a husband — prefer- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 3 

ably Charicles's nephew Alcamenes. But The- 
agenes and Chariclea had seen each other at the 
games and ceremonies, and had already fallen in 
love with each other (III. v; IV. i-iv). Each 
now confided in Calasiris (III. xvii; IV. iv, v, 
x-xiii) ; and an oracle (II. xxxv) and several 
dreams and divine voices (III. xi; IV. xiv, xvi) 
predicted their ultimate union, and sanctioned 
their immediate flight under his protection. 
While Chariclea therefore upon his advice (IV. 
xiii) feigned consent to her marriage with Alca- 
menes, Calasiris took passage for the three (IV. 
xvi) with some Phoenician mariners who 
chanced to be sailing from Delphi to Carthage. 
Under his instructions Theagenes abducted 
Chariclea, and joined Calasiris (IV. xvii-xviii), 
who put the pursuers on a false scent (IV. xix). 
The three sailed away together (V. i). The 
lovers agreed (IV. xviii) to remain virgin till 
their nuptials could be formally celebrated, and 
meanwhile gave themselves out as brother and 
sister, and Calasiris as their father (V. xxvi). 

B. (b) The captain of the Phoenician vessel 
became enamored of Chariclea (V. xix), and 
both she and Calasiris deemed it best to feign 
consent to the marriage, postponing it, however, 
till their arrival at Memphis (V. xx). The ship 
wintering at Zacynthus (V. xviii), our trio 
lodged with Tyrrhenus a fisherman. Though so 
near Ithaca, they neglected to pay their respects 
to Odysseus, whose offended shade appeared in a 
vision (V. xxii) to threaten Calasiris. Trach- 
inus, a pirate of the neighborhood, desired both 



14 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Chariclea and the richly laden ship, and confided 
to Tyrrhenus his plan of attack (V. xx). Tyr- 
rhenus warned his guests, who at once re-em- 
barked (V. xxi-xxii). Nevertheless Trachinus 
overtook them, seized the vessel with its freight, 
and allowing the Tyrian captain and his crew to 
depart in the boats, kept our trio prisoners (V. 
xxiv-xxvi). Upon his offering marriage to 
Chariclea, she again dissembled. A storm drove 
them to the Heracleotic mouth of the Nile, where 
they landed, and Trachinus prepared for an im- 
mediate wedding (V. xxvii-xxix) ; whereupon 
Calasiris devised a stratagem. He persuaded 
Pelorus, Trachinus's lieutenant, that Chariclea 
loved him (V. xxx), and inflamed him with the 
sight of her in bridal array, so that Pelorus dis- 
puted w T ith his captain the distribution of the 
booty, and, as the first to board the captured ship, 
claimed Chariclea for himself (V. xxxi). The 
feast turning into a fight, most of the pirates, 
including Trachinus, were killed; Pelorus in a 
hand-to-hand combat with Theagenes was sorely 
wounded and put to flight; and Calasiris was 
separated from Theagenes and Chariclea, who 
remained together on the shore (V. xxxii- 
xxxiii). 

[Here the story opens, in mediis rebus.] 

C. (I. i-iii) While Chariclea tended the 
wounds of Theagenes, there supervened a small 
band of Egyption robbers, who seized the pair. 
Very soon, however, a larger band came up, 
under the command of one Thyamis. 

D. (I. xix; VII. ii) Thyamis was the eldest 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 5 

son of Calasiris. Shortly after Calasiris's de- 
parture from Memphis, Arsace, sister of the 
Great King and wife of Oroondates, had become 
enamored of Thyamis. She solicited him, but he 
resisted. His younger brother Petosiris, desiring 
to succeed instead of Thyamis to the priestly 
office of his father, traduced Thyamis to Oroon- 
dates, who banished him from Memphis. Thya- 
mis had become chief of the bandits known as 
" Herdsmen." 

E. He now took Theagenes and Chariclea 
from their first captors, conducted them to his 
retreat among the marshes of the Delta, treated 
them honorably (I. v-vii), and proposed to 
marry Chariclea, who again feigned consent (I. 
xix-xxvi). Their captivity was lightened by the 
companionship of Cnemon, a young Athenian, 
who spent the night in telling them F (a). 

F. (a) (I. ix-xvii) Cnemon was the son of 
Aristippus, who took Demaeneta as his second 
wife. Enamored of her stepson, she solicited 
him, and upon his refusal, plotted to ruin him. 
First she feigned illness and falsely accused 
Cnemon of kicking her : thus she had him beaten 
by his father. Then she made her slave girl 
Thisbe gain his affection and confidence, and per- 
suade him to believe that Demaeneta had a para- 
mour who was to visit her on a certain night. 
Cnemon with drawn sword broke into the cham- 
ber and confronted — his father. Aristippus in 
the belief that his son had attempted parricide 
accused him to the Assembly, which banished 
him. The love-sick Demaeneta thereupon re- 



1 6 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

lented; and desiring his return bitterly blamed 
Thisbe for having been but too compliant. In 
fear for herself, Thisbe determined to entrap her 
mistress. Cnemon, she said, was not abroad, but 
hiding in the outskirts of Athens, where he kept 
a slave-girl Arsinoe, a friend of Thisbe's: De- 
maeneta, if she would, might in the dark take 
this girl's place. Demaeneta consented to the 
assignation, and Thisbe actually procured from 
Arsinoe the use of her house. Meanwhile Thisbe 
told Aristippus that at Arsinoe's house Demae- 
neta was to meet a paramour. Aristippus broke 
in and caught his wife, Thisbe slamming a door 
and pretending that the lover had escaped. 
Demaeneta, on the way back to Athens in the 
custody of her husband, threw herself into a pit 
and ended her life. Aristippus reported all to 
the Assembly, which barely exonerated him. 

F. (b) (II. viii-ix) Now it happened that 
Thisbe ousted Arsinoe from the affections of one 
Nausicles, a merchant, and Arsinoe in her 
jealousy revealed her rival's stratagem to De- 
maeneta's relatives. They brought the matter 
again before the Assembly, which found that De- 
maeneta was innocent, and that, as Aristippus 
had been instrumental in procuring her death, he 
must be banished and his goods confiscated. 
The witness he needed to clear him, Thisbe, was 
absent, having gone abroad with Nausicles. 

F. (c) (VI. ii) These facts came to the 
knowledge of Cnemon, who, faithful to his 
father, set out in search of Thisbe in order to 
reinstate him. Cnemon was captured by pirates, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 7 

but escaped, and made his way to Egypt, where 
he was taken prisoner by Thyamis. 

G. That night Thyamis dreamed (I. xviii) 
that Isis in her temple appeared to him and said, 
"I deliver this maiden to you, but though you 
have her you shall not have her, but shall kill 
your guest; yet she shall not be killed." This 
dream he interpreted to suit his wishes. The 
next day (I. xxvii-xxx) he was suddenly at- 
tacked by the robbers who had first seized The- 
agenes and Chariclea, and who had meanwhile 
gathered reinforcements. For safety he made 
Cnemon place Chariclea in the cave where he 
kept his treasure. Desperately pressed by his 
enemies, and determined that no one else should 
have her, he entered the cave, and in the dark 
stabbed a woman whom he took to be Chariclea. 

H. This woman was really Thisbe (II. xiv). 
On her travels with Nausicles she had been cap- 
tured by Thermuthis, the lieutenant of Thyamis, 
and, like Chariclea, had been placed in the cave. 
When Cnemon and Theagenes rejoined Chari- 
clea there, they found on Thisbe's body (II. vi) 
a letter written by her to Cnemon, whom she had 
seen to be a fellow-captive, — protesting (II. x) 
the genuineness of her love for him despite her 
treachery, and imploring him to save her from 
her barbarous lover. Cnemon thereupon told 
F (b) (II. viii-ix). That night (II. xvi) Chari- 
clea dreamed that a ruffian gouged out her right 
eye : a dream interpreted by Cnemon as portend- 
ing the death of her father. 
K. (I. xxxiii) Thyamis was taken alive by 



1 8 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

his enemies, who designed to deliver him to his 
brother at Memphis for the sake of reward. 
This reward Petosiris had offered in order 
both to get Thyamis back into his power and to 
set at rest the rumor that he had killed Thyamis. 

L. Thermuthis (II. xii) escaped from the 
hostile band, found Thisbe dead in the cave, 
joined Theagenes, Chariclea and Cnemon, told 
them his part of H (II. xiv), and set out in 
search of Thyamis (II. xviii). He insisted upon 
Cnemon's bearing him company, who complied, 
upon Theagenes's suggestion that he might easily 
desert Thermuthis whenever he would. So 
Cnemon, agreeing to rejoin Theagenes and 
Chariclea at the town of Chemmis, went with 
Thermuthis, but soon, pretending to fall behind 
by reason of sickness, contrived to leave him 
alone (II. xix-xx). Thermuthis falling asleep 
was stung by an asp, and died. Meanwhile, 
Theagenes and Chariclea, disguised as beggars 
(II. xix; V. iv), also set out for Chemmis. 

M. (II. xxi) On the banks of the Nile near 
Chemmis, Cnemon encountered Calasiris, who 
had wandered thither from the Heracleotic 
mouth of the Nile (see B ad fin.). Here also 
Nausicles, in the course of his search for Thisbe, 
had placed his headquarters, and had taken as a 
guest Calasiris, similarly engaged in a search for 
his adopted children (II. xxii). Now Calasiris 
extended tc Cnemon the shelter of Nausicles's 
house, and there told Cnemon A and B (a) (II. 
xxv-xxxvi; III entire; IV entire; V. i). 

N. Nausicles himself was absent (II. xxiv). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 9 

He had bribed Mithranes, the lieutenant of 
Oroondates, to send a detachment of troops in 
search of Thisbe, and was now with them. They 
met (V. v-vii) and captured Theagenes and 
Chariclea. Mithranes, designing to send The- 
agenes as a present to the Great King, dispatched 
him to his commander Oroondates, then at 
Memphis (V. ix). Chariclea was promptly 
claimed as Thisbe by Nausicles (V. viii), who 
whispered to her that her safety depended upon 
her acknowledging that name. She did so, and 
Nausicles took her to his house at Chemmis, un- 
beknown to his guests. That night (V. ii-iii) 
Cnemon overheard her lamenting her fate and 
calling herself Thisbe; and he was sore afraid. 
Next day she was restored to Calasiris (V. xi- 
xv), to whose claim Nausicles yielded her. 
Calasiris told B (b) (V. xvi-xxxiv) ; Cnemon, 
F (c) (VI. ii). _ 

O. (VI. iii-viii) Thyamis managed to make 
his escape (see K) and to gather another band 
from the town of Bessa. With this he attacked 
Mithranes's force, and took Theagenes. These 
facts were learned by Calasiris, Chariclea, Nau- 
sicles and Cnemon on their way to redeem 
Theagenes from Mithranes. They returned to 
Chemmis. There Nausicles offered Cnemon his 
daughter to wife. Cnemon took her gladly, and 
threw in his lot with his father-in-law, who was 
about to go to Greece. [This is the last of 
Cnemon and of Nausicles.] 

P. (VI. xi-xv) Calasiris and Chariclea dis- 
guised as beggars made their way to Bessa to 



30 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

find Theagenes. Arriving at sunset, they learned 
from an old woman that Mithranes had sought to 
punish the Bessenes for their attack, but had been 
defeated and killed: and that the insurgents 
under Thyamis, in order to strengthen themselves 
against the Great King, from whom they could 
no longer hope for pardon, had now proceeded 
to attack Memphis itself — Oroondates being ab- 
sent upon an expedition into Ethiopia: The- 
agenes, then, was to be found towards Memphis. 
The old woman retired, and now believing her- 
self unobserved, raised the dead body of her 
son, slain in the fight, and by her spells com- 
pelled it to prophesy : " She herself should 
shortly die a violent death ; the priest then pres- 
ent might if he made haste prevent the fatal 
outcome of a combat between his sons; the 
maiden would be united with her lover." Seek- 
ing to destroy the witnesses to her necromancy, 
the witch stumbled, and fell upon the point of a 
spear that stuck up from the field. Thus she 
died. 

Q. Arrived before the walls of Memphis 
(VII. i-iii), Thyamis and Theagenes, now 
grown friends, called for a parley, and demanded 
Thyamis's restoration to the priesthood. In the 
absence of Oroondates, his wife Arsace as regent 
came to the walls, and beheld the two young men. 
Straightway her old desire of Thyamis gave 
place to new desire of Theagenes (VII. iv). 
Yet she so far favored Thyamis as to grant that 
his quarrel with Petosiris should be decided by 
single combat between them. Petosiris re- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 21 

luctantly accepted his brother's challenge, tried to 
run away, and was chased round the walls by 
Thyamis (VII. v-vi). Theagenes, unarmed, ac- 
companied Thyamis : so that Arsace became still 
more passionately enamored of Theagenes's 
grace as a runner. At the moment when 
Thyamis was about to strike (VII. vi-vii), 
arrived Calasiris with Chariclea. The old man 
threw off his rags, appeared in his sacred garb, 
stopped the combat, and reconciled his sons. 
Theagenes not recognizing Chariclea in the 
beggar-girl before him, rebuffed and struck her 
when she tried to embrace him; but she mur- 
mured their countersign Pythius and exhibited 
her torch: whereupon he knew her and com- 
pleted this scene of recognition. Received 
enthusiastically by the Memphians (VII. viii), 
who flocked about them, they all entered the city 
in a sort of triumphal procession. 

Calasiris now inducted Thyamis into the 
priesthood, resigned his own robes, and died 
(VII. viii, xi), perhaps of joy in this consum- 
mation. (Thus verifying an oracle he had 
received upon his arrival at Delphi: that he 
should soon possess a piece of Egyptian 
ground.) His funeral rites made it unlaw- 
ful for any but priests to enter the precincts 
of the temple for seven days. Thus Thyamis 
was rendered unable to keep Theagenes and 
Chariclea there under his own protection, and 
they were left to the designs of Arsace (VII. 
ix-xv). She lodged them well in the palace, 
and, assisted by her old chamber-woman, Cybele, 



22 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

who acted as go-between, gradually acquainted 
Theagenes with her wishes. He repeatedly re- 
fused her (VII. xix, xxii, xxv) — despite 
Chariclea's advice (VII. xxi) to him to feign 
compliance— and at a public audience gave her 
scant respect. Cybele's son, Achaemenes (VII. 
xv-xvi), formerly an officer under Mithranes, 
had been given charge of Theagenes to take him 
to Oroondates. Now he recognized him; and, 
seeing Chariclea too, fell in love with her. When 
his mother, who had failed to persuade The- 
agenes, was in fear of Arsace's threats, he of- 
fered Arsace a sure means of forcing Theagenes 
to comply (VII. xxiii-xxiv), provided she would 
promise him " Theagenes's sister " to wife. She 
consented, and he thereupon told her that The- 
agenes was in reality her slave, as he had been 
taken in war and destined for her husband to 
send to her brother the Great King. Arsace 
now made Theagenes her servant at table. But 
when she told him that she had granted "his 
sister " to Achaemenes, he pretended that his re- 
sistance was overcome (VII. xxv-xxvi), re- 
quested private audience with only Cybele as wit- 
ness, revealed Chariclea's real relation to himself, 
and urged that as Arsace had promised Achae- 
menes not " Chariclea," but " Theagenes's sister," 
she might lawfully disavow her supposed 
promise. He himself, he said, would yield as 
soon as she did so. Thus he again raised him- 
self into high favor, still further inflamed Arsace 
(VII. xxvii) by his grace in serving her at table, 
and frustrated Achaemenes. Informed by his 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 23 

mother (VII. xxviii), Achaemenes at once posted 
off to Oroondates (VII. xxix) who was then 
preparing a campaign against the Ethiopians in 
re the still unsettled question of Philae and the 
emerald mines (see A). Him he told of Chari- 
clea's beauty, and of Arsace's conduct toward 
Theagenes. Oroondates forthwith sent peremp- 
torily for both the prisoners (VIII. i-iii). 

Meanwhile Theagenes had resumed his resist- 
ance, and at the instigation of Cybele had been 
imprisoned and flogged (VIII. iii, v-vi) by order 
of Arsace. It was in vain that Thyamis (VIII. 
iii-v), now at liberty after the period of ritual 
seclusion, requested Arsace to turn the lovers 
over to his care. She declined to give them up. 
Theagenes in his cell continually called upon the 
name of Chariclea (VIII. vi) ; whereat Cybele 
conceived the idea that if Chariclea were put out 
of the way, Theagenes would yield. With 
Arsace's permission, therefore (VIII. vii-viii), 
she attempted to poison Chariclea. But the 
slave-girl who offered the cups accidentally inter- 
changed them, and Cybele drank the poison. Yet 
even as she died, her malice worked : by signs 
she charged Chariclea with poisoning her. 
Arsace had Chariclea imprisoned (VIII. ix) and 
on the next day arraigned; who defied her, but 
declared that if Theagenes were, as she supposed, 
dead, she would acknowledge the crime, that 
she too might die. Thereupon she was con- 
demned to the stake. But the stone Pantarbe 
in her ring kept her unscathed in the midst of 
the flames. Pitying her beauty and manifest 



24 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

innocence, the people rescued her; but Arsace 
recaptured her and harangued them to the effect 
that she had been saved by witchcraft only : next 
day they should come and themselves should have 
an opportunity to condemn her upon all the evi- 
dence. Meanwhile, as an additional torment, that 
she might behold her lover's sad plight, she was 
committed to the cell occupied by Theagenes ; but 
they regarded this course as a favor, and spent 
the night in talk. Chariclea related (VIII. xi) 
that on the previous night Calasiris had appeared 
to her in a vision and bidden her be of good 
cheer, for Pantarbe would save her. Theagenes 
related that Calasiris had on the same night ap- 
peared to him and predicted that on the morrow 
the lovers should escape and soon reach Ethiopia. 
The fulfilment of the first prediction made them 
look confidently for that of the second. 

Indeed, that very night (VIII. xii-xv) 
Oroondates's deputy arrived, and, showing his 
authority, removed the prisoners and conducted 
them towards Oroondates. On the way a mes- 
senger overtook them to announce that Arsace 
upon learning of their removal had killed her- 
self. Later a messenger from the front met 
them with the news that Oroondates had gone to 
Syene, which was threatened by the enemy 
(VIII. xvi-xvii). Travelling in that direction, 
the lovers were shortly captured by a scouting 
party of Ethiopians, who conveyed them to the 
army of Hydaspes. 

Hydaspes was besieging Oroondates in Syene 
(IX. i-xxii). By means of great trenches and 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 25 

earthen dykes he surrounded the city with the 
waters of the Nile, which, insulating it, rose 
against its walls, and threatened to break through 
and drown the inhabitants. Oroondates capitu- 
lated, offering to surrender Syene, as well as 
Philae and the emerald mines, and to undertake 
no further hostilities, if he were allowed to de- 
part with his army to Elephantis. Meanwhile 
he dispatched two messengers thither. Pending 
negotiations, Hydaspes granted a truce, and by 
new feats of engineering led off the waters of 
the Nile. Then, by night, Oroondates and his 
army treacherously made their escape by means 
of planks laid across the mud-ring, and at Ele- 
phantis joined the main force of Persians, pre- 
pared by the messengers he had sent. Returning 
with all his troops, he retook Syene, which was 
guarded by only a small garrison. Then 
Hydaspes fought a great battle, and defeated and 
captured Oroondates, but spared him, forgave his 
treachery, and (IX. xxv) made him Viceroy 
under himself. 

With the other prisoners Theagenes and Chari- 
clea (IX. xxiii-xxiv) were presented to Hy- 
daspes, who by reason of their exceeding beauty 
reserved them to be sacrificed when they should 
reach Ethiopia. Chariclea, — though Theagenes 
urged her, and though Hydaspes related a dream 
he had had which showed him a daughter of his 
own like Chariclea in appearance, — would not 
then disclose her identity. She was determined 
to wait till she should be in her mother's pres- 
ence, whose instinct could not fail to identify her. 



26 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Here and now her tokens might be misunder- 
stood, and might be supposed to be stolen. 

To Meroe, then, the prisoners were taken — 
Hydaspes's capital; where they were met by 
Persina, with the priestly gymnosophists, and 
great numbers of the Ethiopian people (X. i-vi), 
all rejoicing in the victory. When led forth to 
the sacrifice, Theagenes and Chariclea (X. vii) 
astonished all by their beauty and courageous 
bearing. Chariclea particularly appealed to the 
sympathy of Persina, who hoped that in the trial 
of chastity which was to establish the purity of 
the victims she might fail and so be saved. Not 
so (X. viii, ix) : she leaped upon the heated 
golden bars of the altar, but remained unscathed. 
So too did Theagenes. And now the president 
of the gymnosophists — no other than old Sisi- 
mithres — declined to make, or to countenance by 
his presence, a human sacrifice, and with his band 
was about to withdraw, when Chariclea (X. 
x-xv), hearing the King address him as Sisi- 
mithres, saw that the moment had come, and 
begged him to remain. In his presence she then 
disclosed her identity; offering in evidence her 
inscribed fillets, which Persina acknowledged at 
once; her striking resemblance to the pictured 
Andromeda ; the ring Pantarbe, which Hydaspes 
recognized as the bethrothal ring he had given his 
wife; and a black mark which Sisimithres re- 
membered to have seen on the arm of the child 
he had found. Chariclea (X. xi) claimed ex- 
emption, for that only foreigners might be 
sacrificed. Hydaspes, only too ready to grant it 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 27 

upon personal motives, yet felt obliged to offer, 
in a long speech to his people, to sacrifice his 
daughter nevertheless for their sake, lest the gods 
be wroth with them all. But the multitude 
unanimously refused (X. xvi, xvii). Thus was 
Chariclea saved. 

In the most absurdly mock-modest, round- 
about, underhand, and self-contradictory fashion, 
she proceeded (X. xviii-xxii) to give her parents 
incomprehensible hints about her true relations 
with Theagenes — now imploring his preserva- 
tion, now demanding that she alone might wield 
the knife to sacrifice him — until Hydaspes 
actually thought her mad. To give her time to 
recover, he took the opportunity to receive the 
ambassadors who had come to congratulate him. 
One of them was his nephew Meroebus (X. 
xxiii-xxiv), whom he at once bethrothed to 
Chariclea. Meroebus presented to Hydaspes a 
gigantic athlete (X. xxv) — a champion racer, 
boxer and wrestler, — whose challenge nobody ac- 
cepting, he received a prize by default. Among 
the other gifts was a camelopard (X. xviii-xxx). 
This strange and terrifying creature so frightened 
a sacrificial bull and two white horses that they 
broke loose and galloped about. In the con- 
fusion, Theagenes, whose keepers had relaxed 
their guard, leaped upon one of the horses, and, 
without attempting to escape, pursued the bull 
and drove him in a team with his own mount; at 
length, having tired him out, he leaped upon him 
and dragged him to the ground by the horns. 
The people shouted acclaim, and demanded that 



28 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

he be matched with the wrestler. Him too he 
felled (X. xxxi-xxxii). The King then 
crowned Theagenes victor, who made the same 
petition as Chariclea had made, — that she be the 
one to wield the knife. This request was re- 
fused, and he was being led to the altar (X. 
xxxiii), when who should appear but Charicles! 
Ever since Chariclea's elopement he had been 
wandering in search of her, and had now traced 
her to Egypt, whence he had taken this last step 
by the aid of Oroondates, from whom he bore 
(X. xxxiv) a letter to Hydaspes. Seizing 
Theagenes (X. xxxv-xxxvi), Charicles de- 
manded his punishment for the abduction of 
Chariclea and the sacrilege done to the temple of 
Diana at Delphi! Theagenes admitted the 
charge (X. xxxvii). Chariclea welcomed Chari- 
cles (X. xxxviii), and begged him to punish her 
for her disobedience to him, enjoined though it 
was by the gods. -Persina, now convinced that 
our lovers were man and wife, so assured 
Hydaspes. He turned for advice to Sismithres, 
who in a loud voice, that the people might hear 
and approve (X. xxxix-xli), declared that the 
gods had manifested clearly their unwillingness 
to receive this or any other human sacrifice: let 
the custom, then, be abolished, and this young 
couple be formally wedded. The people again 
shouted approval ; and so, with the consent of all, 
Theagenes and Chariclea proceeded to the cele- 
bration of their nuptial rites. 



elizabethan prose fiction 29 

Longus : 
Daphnis and Chloe 

Preface (Prooemium) 

Hunting on Lesbos, I saw in a beautiful grove 
a painting representing the incidents of a love- 
story, — " the fortunes of Love " : women in labor, 
nurses swathing new-born babes; infants ex- 
posed; animals suckling them; shepherds carry- 
ing them away; young people embracing; an 
attack by pirates; an inroad by a hostile force. 
I procured an explanation of the series, and 
wrote out these four books — an offering to the 
God of Love, to the Nymphs, and to Pan. 

Book I 

i-iii. Lamon, a goatherd upon an estate near 
Mitylene, found in a thicket one of his she-goats 
suckling a boy-baby, who lay exposed in a very 
rich mantle, with a little ivory-hilted sword. He 
took the boy with the tokens home to his wife 
Myrtale, who agreed with him to adopt the child. 
They named him Daphnis. iv-vi. Two years 
later Dryas, a neighboring shepherd, found in a 
cave sacred to the Nymphs, one of his ewes 
suckling a girl-baby, who besides swaddling 
clothes had gilt sandals, golden anklets and a 
head-dress wrought with gold. He took her 
with her tokens to his wife, and they adopted 
her, calling her Chloe. 

vii-x. When Daphnis was fifteen and Chloe 



30 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

thirteen, their adoptive fathers had on the same 
night a vision of a winged boy with bow and 
arrows, to whom the Nymphs presented Daphnis 
and Chloe, and who, touching them with one of 
his shafts, bade them follow the pastoral life. 
So they tended their flocks together in the 
springtime, and played in childlike peace, until 
Love contrived a serious interruption, xi-xii. 
Daphnis pursuing a goat fell into a pit that had 
been dug to catch a wolf, and was rescued by 
Chloe with the help of a cowherd. He was so 
covered with mud and dirt that he must needs 
bathe. [xiii-xvii. As Chloe helped to wash 
him, she saw the beauty of his sunburned skin and 
felt the softness of his flesh, and so first experi- 
enced love. She languished, lay awake, took no 
food, and soliloquized with many antitheses and 
oxymora. 

Dorco the cowherd became enamored of Chloe, 
gave her many rustic gifts, and at length vied 
with Daphnis in argument as to whether Daphnis 
or he were the more beautiful — the prize to be a 
kiss from Chloe. Daphnis was the winner; and 
the kiss set his heart on fire. He too languished 
and grew pale; he too soliloquized] with (xviii) 
much oxymoron. 

xix-xxii. Dorco asked Dryas for the hand of 
Chloe, but was refused, as Dryas hoped for a 
better match. Thus thwarted, Dorco resolved to 
carry off Chloe, and, in order to terrify her, 
clothed himself in a wolf's skin and hid among 

6 The passage between brackets is the fragment discovered 
by P. L. Courier in 1807 ; and is of course unknown to the 
Renaissance. It is D, p. 135, 1. 13-p. 137, L 21, both included. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 3 1 

the bushes near her pasture-ground. But her 
dogs scenting him attacked and bit him sorely, 
before Chloe, and Daphnis whom she had called, 
could come to his rescue. Both Daphnis and 
Chloe thought the disguise merely an innocent 
jest on the part of Dorco. They collected their 
flocks, which had been scattered by the barking 
of the dogs, and, tired by the day's exertion, 
slept soundly that night despite their lovesickness. 

xxiii-xxvii. Now Daphnis and Chloe again 
tended their flocks together in the growing sum- 
mer heat, which still further inflamed them. 
Chloe milked her ewes and she-goats, and 
crowned herself with a chaplet of pine. Daphnis 
bathed, and Chloe put on his dress. They pelted 
each other with apples. Daphnis taught Chloe 
to play upon his pipe, and gained kisses at second 
hand by touching quickly with his lips the places 
her lips had touched. Once when Chloe fell 
asleep at noonday, a grasshopper pursued by a 
swallow dropped into her bosom, and the swallow 
fluttering over her awoke her. She screamed; 
but Daphnis laughed at her alarm, and with his 
hand took out the happy grasshopper, which she 
kissed and replaced in her bosom. At the sound 
of a ring-dove's cooing, Daphnis told Chloe the 
legend: how the dove was once a maiden, a 
tender of flocks, sweet-voiced ; and how a youth 
contending with her in song charmed away eight 
of her cows. She prayed to be transformed into 
a bird; the gods granted her prayer; and still 
she calls her cows, in vain. 

xxviii-xxx. In the early autumn, some 



32 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Tyrian pirates descended upon that coast. After 
a struggle with Dorco they ,drove off some of 
his oxen; and finding Daphnis alone upon the 
shore, carried him away too, calling upon Chloe 
for help. She ran to Dorco, who, sore wounded 
and about to breathe his last, gave her his pipe, 
with the direction to play upon it the call his 
oxen knew. Then he died, taking one kiss from 
her as his reward. Chloe played the well-known 
tune; whereupon the oxen thronged to one side 
of the pirate ship and leapt overboard, capsizing 
it and precipitating the crew and Daphnis into 
the water. The pirates, weighed down with their 
armor, soon drowned; Daphnis, lightly clad, 
swam ashore between two oxen, grasping a horn 
of each. 

xxxi-xxxii. They celebrated in rustic fashion 
the funeral of Dorco. Then Chloe bathed 
Daphnis, and for the first time in his presence 
bathed herself ; so that he was nigh distracted. 

Book II 

i-ii. Now came the vintage ; and Daphnis and 
Chloe left their flocks and helped. The women 
admired Daphnis, the men Chloe, who both 
wished themselves back at the herding. At 
length, when the grapes were all trodden and the 
new wine stored in casks, they returned, and 
rejoiced with their flocks. An old man named 
Philetas, sitting near, accosted them, and told 
them this Idyll : 

iii-vi. " I have a beautiful garden. Today 
when I entered it about noon, I spied a little 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 33 

naked boy under my pomegranates and myrtles, 
some of which he had plucked. I sprang to 
catch him, but lightly he escaped; and when I 
paused exhausted, he came near and smiled so 
irresistibly that I offered him the freedom of my 
garden for a kiss. Laughing he replied : ' One 
kiss from me would only make you run after me 
for more ; and in vain, for you could never catch 
me. Child though I seem, I am older than 
Saturn or old Time ; and I have known you, 
Philetas, of old. I was by when you wooed 
Amaryllis: she and your sons were my gifts to 
you. Through me it is that your garden blooms. 
But just now I am shepherding Daphnis and 
Chloe/ Like a young nightingale he sprang up 
among the myrtles, and vanished, but not before 
I saw wings upon his shoulders, and a bow and 
arrows between. Depend upon it, you are con- 
secrated to Love." 

vii-xi. " What is this Love ? " they asked, " a 
child or a bird?" 

Philetas answered in praise of Love, telling of 
his dominion over all nature and over the gods 
themselves; of the pains he inflicts: heat, cold, 
and desire, loss of appetite and of sleep; and of 
the remedies: to kiss, embrace, and lie naked 
together. Hereon they mused; and, when 
Philetas had gone and they had returned home, 
they realized, each of them, that the symptoms he 
had described were their own. Next morning 
they tried for the first time the first two remedies, 
and on the following day a literal version of the 
third, but without avail. 



34 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

xii-xix. At this time some young men of 
Methymne came to spend the vintage in hunting 
and fishing along this coast. A peasant having 
stolen the cable wherewith they had moored their 
boat, they substituted a twisted willow-withe. 
The chase frightened Daphnis's goats down to 
the shore, where finding no other food they 
gnawed through the osier ; so that a rising swell 
carried away the boat and its contents. The 
youths found Daphnis, gave him a beating, and 
were preparing to bind him, when Lamon and 
Dryas appeared in answer to his cries, and in- 
sisted upon a fair hearing for both sides. Phi- 
letas as the oldest man present was chosen as 
judge, and, having heard the youths and Daphnis 
plead their cause, decided for Daphnis. En- 
raged, the Methymnaeans seized Daphnis again, 
but were beaten off by the countrymen and had to 
make their painful way home on foot. There 
they told as much of the story as favored them- 
selves, and incited their fellow citizens to make 
war on the Lesbians. 

xx-xxiv. The invaders with a fleet ravaged the 
coast, seized Daphnis's herds and carried off 
Chloe — though she had fled for asylum to the 
grotto of the Nymphs, where she had first been 
found. Daphnis not finding her at their usual 
haunts lamented her to the Nymphs, who reas- 
sured him in a vision, promising the aid of Pan, 
to whom they recommended him now to pay 
due honors. So he did, and returned home. 

xxv-xxx. During that night and the next day 
the Methymnaean fleet was beset with Panic 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 35 

terrors: the earth appeared to be in a blaze, 
hostile vessels seemed to approach with clashing 
oars, the goats' horns were wreathed with ivy, 
the sheep howled like wolves, Chloe herself was 
garlanded with pine-branches; anchors stuck, 
oars were split, dolphins leapt from the sea and 
shattered the vessel's planks; and from the top 
of a neighboring headland were heard the terrific 
notes of Pan's own pipe. At length Pan himself 
addressing the commander in a dream bade him 
restore Chloe and the goats and sheep, which 
being immediately landed, Pan's pipes guided, 
now playing a sweet pastoral measure, over this 
strange country back to Daphnis. 

xxxi-xxxiii. Daphnis and Chloe gratefully 
sacrificed to the Nymphs and to Pan; Lamon 
and Dryas, Philetas and his young son Tityrus 
assisting at the feast. Each of the participants 
contributed to the entertainment. xxxiv. 
Lamon related the legend of Pan and Syrinx, and 
of the invention of the pipes of Pan. xxxv. 
Philetas on his own great pipe played all the 
varieties of pastoral melody — the tune for oxen, 
the tune for goats, the tune for sheep — and 
finally the vintage-dance, xxxvi. This Dryas 
danced in pantomime, imitating every process of 
the vintage, xxxvii-xxxix. Then Daphnis and 
Chloe in pantomimic dance enacted Pan and 
Syrinx — Daphnis at length playing so sweetly 
upon Philetas' pipe his lamentation for the 
Nymph transformed, that Philetas bestowed 
upon him the pipe. Daphnis dedicated his old 
boyish pipe as an offering to Pan; and with 



36 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Chloe driving homeward their flocks and herds, 
so ended the day. Next morning they met 
earlier than usual, again tried in vain the reme- 
dies of love, and vowed mutual fidelity. 

Book III 

i-iii. Mitylene now sent an army against 
Methymne, which, by this time, discovering the 
true cause of the fray to have been the insolence 
of her own young men, asked for peace and 
offered to restore all the spoils — an offer which 
was at once accepted. "Thus did the war be- 
tween Methymne and Mitylene begin and end in 
an equally unexpected manner." 

iv-xi. Now winter came, and snow blocked 
the roads and shut the cottagers within doors 
to their fireside occupations. Chloe was kept at 
the spinning and the wool-carding, but Daphnis 
went abroad to snare birds in the trees near 
Chloe's cottage, hoping for a pretext to enter 
and see her. When he had snared a bagful 
without seeing a sign of life from within, he was 
just about to depart when Dryas himself — in 
chase of a sheep-dog that had stolen his meat — 
came out and heartily invited Daphnis in. 
Daphnis and Chloe met and embraced ; she served 
wine, herself sipping first, and he drank at the 
spot her lips had touched. Then they all sat 
by the fire, and at length Lamon and Myrtale 
invited Daphnis to remain till the morrow. He 
gladly accepted, and gave them his bag of birds 
for supper. So they sat round the fire again, 
drinking and singing and telling stories till bed- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 37 

time. Next day Daphnis and Chloe snared birds 
together, and again exchanged vows, and told 
of their longing for the spring. Then Daphnis 
took his leave, but often thereafter contrived 
occasion for new visits. 

xii-xx. At last came spring once more, all 
living creatures loved, and Daphnis and Chloe, 
themselves shepherded by Love, went forth 
before all the other shepherds, that they might 
be together alone. Daphnis now grown bolder 
in love tried to treat Chloe as he saw the rams 
treat the ewes, and the he-goats their mates, but 
still in vain. And now Lycaenium, the young 
city wife of their old neighbor Chromis, gave 
Daphnis a lesson in love. This however he 
would not practice with Chloe, fearing to hurt 
her. 

xxi-xxiii. As they sat together, a fishing-boat 
passed near them, the boatswain and the sailors 
singing a rowing song and chorus, which the 
echo prolonged and redoubled. "Was there 
another sea behind the hill, and other sailors 
singing?" Chloe asked when all was still 
again. Daphnis smiling told her the legend of 
Echo— stipulating for a reward of ten kisses: 
' Echo, the daughter of a nymph and of a mortal, 
learned from the Muses every kind of music. 
She refused marriage, and fled the sight of men. 
Pan in his indignation inspired the shepherds 
with such frenzy that they tore her limb from 
limb. Her melodious body, though covered with 
earth, still preserves its gift of music, and imi- 
tates all sounds, even those of the pipes of Pan,— 



38 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

who, when he hears her, rushes over the hills 
to find his hidden pupil.' Chloe gave him kisses 
not ten but a thousand. 

xxv-xxix. This summer Chloe had many 
suitors, who offered rich gifts ; but Dryas still 
postponed a decision, in the hope of a more 
brilliant match, — aware as he was that Chloe 
was something above a shepherd's daughter. 
Daphnis in distress at the chance of losing her, 
desired to ask her hand, but his foster-parents 
also disapproved, wishing to reserve him for a 
less humble bride. Moreover, Daphnis himself 
was poor. Now he prayed to the Nymphs, who 
in a vision told him that the boat of the young 
Methymnaeans had been driven ashore and 
wrecked, leaving a purse of three thousand 
drachmas under a bunch of seaweed near a dead 
dolphin, the smell of which had kept others from 
finding the treasure. This very smell guided 
Daphnis to it, who boldly offered it to Dryas as 
his wooing gift. 

xxx-xxxiv. Dryas accepted, and went to gain 
the consent of Lamon. This Lamon gave, sub- 
ject to the consent of his master, who was ex- 
pected from Mitylene in the autumn to visit his 
estate. Joyfully Dryas returned and told the 
news to Daphnis, joyfully Daphnis received it 
and ran to tell Chloe. Her he found at the 
milking and cheese-making, wherein he helped 
her openly, as her affianced ; and then they went 
together to look for fruit. One bright particular 
apple, golden and fragrant, and solitary on the 
top of the tree, Daphnis climbed for, and plucked, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 39 

and gave to Chloe ; and she gave him a kiss more 
precious than a golden apple. 

Book IV 

i-vi. In preparation for his master's visit, now 
announced definitely by a neighbor, Lamon set in 
order his house and his garden. Soon another 
messenger, Eudromus, came with orders for them 
to get in the vintage: at the end of the vintage 
the master would come. Daphnis gave Eudro- 
mus many gifts, who returned to Mitylene well 
pleased. 

vii-x. Lampis an insolent herdsman, and an 
envious wooer of Chloe, desiring to destroy 
Lamon's interest with his master and so spoil 
her match with Daphnis, broke into Lamon's 
garden at night, and uprooted, broke, or trampled 
down the flowers. All were in despair until 
Eudromus — coming to announce the arrival of 
the master in three days, and that of his son the 
next day — counselled them to tell the whole to 
their young master Astylus. Astylus, who in 
fact came next day with Gnatho his parasite, 
heard the story, and promised to intercede for 
them with his father, — promised indeed to lay 
the blame upon his own horses, which he would 
say had done the damage. 

xi-xii. Gnatho now made paederastic pro- 
posals to Daphnis, who knocked him down. Still 
Gnatho hoped to obtain him as a gift from 
Astylus. 

xiii-xv. Meanwhile, Dionysophanes and Clear- 
ista arrived, and, well pleased with what they 



40 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

saw — for they excused the condition of the gar- 
den — promised Lamon his freedom. Then they 
inspected the herd of goats, which they found to 
have prospered under Daphnis's charge, and they 
listened while Daphnis put the goats through a 
drill, to the sound of his pipe. 

xvi-xvii. Gnatho now with arguments in favor 
of paederasty asked Daphnis of Astylus, who 
promised to beg him of Dionysophanes. xviii. 
This conversation, overheard by Eudromus and 
reported to Lamon, determined the latter to re- 
veal the circumstances of the finding of Daphnis. 
xix-xx. Accordingly, upon Dionysophanes send- 
ing for Lamon and telling him that Daphnis 
would accompany Astylus, Lamon told his story 
and produced the tokens, xxi-xxiii. These 
Dionysophanes and Clearista recognized as hav- 
ing been exposed with their own youngest child ; 
and Astylus at once ran for Daphnis. Fearing 
that he was to be treated with violence, Daphnis 
ran to a cliff, ready to throw himself into the sea ; 
but his brother reassured him, and brought him 
to their father, who told them the story of the 
exposure : xxiv. Having married young he had 
had a daughter and two sons — with which issue 
being content, he had exposed his fourth child; 
but the daughter and one son soon thereafter had 
died on the same day, leaving Astylus the only 
survivor: so that the parents now rejoiced at 
finding Daphnis again. 

xxv-xxix. Daphnis still performed his duties 
as herdsman. While his friends and parents 
feasted, and while he said farewell to each of his 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 4 1 

pastoral implements and occupations, Chloe 
wept, fearing that he would forsake her. 
Lampis seeing his opportunity and certain that 
Daphnis would not marry her, gathered a band of 
rustics and was carrying her off, when Gnatho 
rescued her, in the hope of thus conciliating 
Daphnis; who did indeed forgive him when 
Chloe was restored. 

xxx-xxxiii. Daphnis now proposed to marry 
Chloe secretly: but Dryas published the circum- 
stances under which he had found her. With 
a view to the happiness of Daphnis, his parents 
consented to the marriage, and received Chloe, 
and arrayed her splendidly. She too said fare- 
well to her flock, and hung up her pipe, her scrip, 
her cloak, and her milking-pails ; and with the 
others went to the city. 

xxxiv-xxxvi. There, on the eve of the mar- 
riage-feast, the Nymphs and Love appeared to 
Dionysophanes, bidding him exhibit Chloe's 
tokens to each of the wedding-guests. So he 
did, and they were acknowledged by Megacles, a 
man of high rank in Mitylene. He told the 
story of Chloe's exposure : She had been born at 
a time when his wealth had been exhausted ; and 
he had exposed her in the hope that some 
wealthier person might adopt her. Then his 
riches had increased, when he had no heir; but 
the gods had continually sent him dreams signify- 
ing that a ewe would make him a father ! With 
great joy he received Chloe for his daughter. 

xxxvii-xl. Next morning they all returned to 
the country ; for Daphnis and Chloe were tired of 



42 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

the city, and wished a rustic wedding. And so 
did they celebrate it, with pastoral splendor ; and 
at last, too, found the remedy of Love ! To Love, 
to Pan, and to the Nymphs, indeed, they con- 
secrated their lives; and their first child, a boy, 
was suckled by a goat; their second, a girl, by 
a ewe. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 43 

Achilles Tatius: 

Clitophon and Leucippe 

Book I 

i. (Sidon described: its double harbor.) 
Arriving in Sidon after a storm, I made a thank- 
offering to Astarte, and then went about the city 
and looked at other offerings. There I saw a 
picture of Europa. (Picture of Europa de- 
scribed.) ii. I exclaimed upon the power of 
Love, which could master even Zeus; where- 
upon a young man standing by declared that he 
had himself experienced that power. We re- 
tired to the banks of a stream in a grove of 
plane-trees, where he told his story: 

iii. I am Clitophon, the son of Hippias of 
Tyre. My mother died when I was an infant. 
My father marrying again had a daughter Calli- 
gone, to whom he wished to marry me ; but Fate 
decreed otherwise. (Disquisition on fate as pre- 
figured by dreams, which enable men not to avoid 
it but only to dull the edge of their suffering.) 
When I was nineteen years old, Fortune began 
the drama I shall relate. I dreamed one night 
that my body from the middle downward was one 
with the body of a maiden, and that a woman of 
horrible aspect, with a sickle in her right hand 
and a torch in her left, cut us apart. This 
dream I regarded as a portent. My father had 
a rich half-brother, Sostratus, in Byzantium, 
from whom there now came a letter, recommend- 
ing to my father's care during a war between 



44 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Thrace and Byzantium, the writer's wife Panthea 
and daughter Leucippe. iv. The ladies arrived 
immediately ; and at first sight of Leucippe I fell 
in love with her. (Leucippe described. Love 
enters at the eyes.) v-vi. At supper I gazed 
and could eat nothing, but feasted my eyes like 
one banqueting in a dream. Thus I languished 
three days. vii. My cousin Clinias, two years 
older than I, a love-adept, I had always teased 
about his passion; but now I sought him and 
confessed that he had been right in predicting 
that I too should sometime be love's slave. 
From the symptoms of my vigil he at once con- 
cluded that I really was in love. While we were 
conversing, enter Clinias's favorite Charicles, to 
whom Clinias had recently given a horse. Chari- 
cles told us that his father wished him to marry 
a rich and ugly woman, viii. Thereupon Clinias 
burst into an invective against women and against 
marriage ; but Charicles, as his marriage was not 
to take place for several days, put away thoughts 
of that calamity, and went to race his new horse 
— to take what was to prove both his first and 
his last ride. 

ix-xi. I resumed my complaint to Clinias, who 
gave me explicit instructions in both the theory 
and the practice of love. (Ars Amatoria.) "All 
very well," said I, "but here success may be 
worse than failure : being betrothed to my father's 
choice, I cannot wed Leucippe even if I win her. 
I am torn between necessity and nature, I must 
decide between Love and my father; and Love 
with his arrows and his fire coerces the judge." 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 45 

xii. At this point a slave rushed in, and re- 
ported that Charicles had been killed by a fall 
from his horse: After running two or three 
courses, he had let go the reins, and, still seated, 
was wiping the sweat from the horse's back, 
when upon a sudden noise the horse ran furiously 
away, rushed haphazard into a wood, dashed his 
rider off against a tree, and trampled him as he 
lay entangled in the reins. (Detailed description 
of the horse in action : he is like a ship in a storm ; 
his hind feet try to overtake his forefeet, etc., 
etc.) xiii. Clinias, at first struck dumb by sor- 
row, now uttered loud cries; and we went to 
where the body had been carried — all one wound. 
Charicles's father lamented : " 111 betide all horse- 
manship ! Others who die, though their soul be 
fled, preserve at least the beautiful semblance of 
their body — some poor solace to the mourner; 
but in thee Fortune has destroyed both soul and 
body, and thou hast died a double death. What 
now shall be thy wedding-day ? Thou hast gone 
from bridal to burial; malignant Fortune has 
quenched the marriage torch, and instead the 
funeral torch shall be kindled for thee." xiv. 
Clinias, vying with the father in grief, exclaimed : 
1 Tis I that have caused his death : to this beau- 
tiful youth I gave a savage brute. I decked the 
murderer with gold. Beast ! insensible to beauty, 
ungrateful to him that fondled and fed thee ! " 

xv. When the funeral was over, I hastened to 
Leucippe, who was in the garden (Garden elabo- 
rately described) with a slave Clio, looking at 
the peacock, xvi-xix. Just then he spread his 
tail and showed the amphitheatre of his feathers ; 



46 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

this I made the occasion of my speech, as I 
wished to lead Leucippe's thoughts to love. 
" The bird," I said to a slave Satyrus, " spreads 
his tail to attract his mate there under the plane- 
tree: it is for her that he displays the field of 
his feathers. But his field is more blooming 
than the meadow itself; for it has gold, and 
purple rings, and an eye in each ring." Falling 
in with my purpose, Satyrus asked ; " Can love 
kindle even the birds ? " " Why not," I answered, 
" when he himself is winged? More than that, — 
he kindles reptiles and beasts, plants and stones. 
The magnet loves the iron ; the male palm droops 
for love of the female, and his pangs are allayed 
when the husbandman engrafts upon his heart a 
shoot from her. So of waters: Alpheus crosses 
the sea to Arethusa, bringing to her as wedding- 
gifts the objects cast into his waters by cele- 
brants at Olympia. As for serpents — the viper, 
amorous of the lamprey, ejects his poison; and 
then they embrace." Leucippe seemed to listen 
not unwillingly to this amatory discourse. Her 
beauty surpassed that of the peacock, and vied 
with that of the meadow; her complexion was 
like the narcissus, her cheeks like the rose, her 
eyes like the violet, her hair like tendrils of ivy : 
so that " there was a garden in her face." Soon 
she went away to practise upon the harp; and 
Satyrus and I congratulated each other upon our 
tact. 

Book II 

i. We followed, to hear her performance. 
She sang first Homer's combat of the lion and 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 47 

the ^ boar (II. XVI. 823; B 371 n.), then the 
praises of the rose ; and as she sang, I seemed to 
see a rose upon her lips, as if the flower's cup 
had been changed into them, ii-iii. We pro- 
ceeded to supper. It was the feast of Dionysus 
patron of the vintage, whom the Tyrians claim 
for their own god. (Legend of the origin of 
wine.) On the table was a crystal winecup, of 
beautiful workmanship : from the vines engraved 
upon it hung clusters of grapes, unripe and green 
when it was empty, ripe and red when it was 
filled: and among them was Bacchus himself 
as vine-dresser. As the wine warmed us, Leu- 
cippe and I gazed more boldly at each other ; for 
wine is the food of Love. Eros kindles the 
flame, and Bacchus feeds it. 

Thus ten days passed, neither of us obtaining, 
or even seeking, aught but glances, iv. Then I 
confided in Satyrus, who said he had known my 
secret, but for fear of offending me had dis- 
sembled his knowledge. "Chance favors us," 
he continued, " for I have an amorous under- 
standing with Clio, who has charge of Leucippe's 
chamber. But now you must do more than look. 
(Ars Amatoria.) Take courage, Eros is no 
coward; see how he is armed with bow and 
quiver, arrows and fire, all virile and daring. I 
will arrange with Clio to give you an interview 
alone with Leucippe." v-vi. He departed, and 
I was soliloquizing, when Leucippe entered alone. 
I turned pale and then red, but chance came to 
my assistance, vii-viii. The day before, a bee 
had stung Clio's hand, and Leucippe had mur- 



48 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

mured over it a spell which had relieved the pain. 
This I had observed. It happened now that 
perceiving a bee or wasp flying about my face, I 
conceived the idea of feigning that my lip was 
stung. The stratagem succeeded: Leucippe ap- 
proached her lips to mine in order to repeat her 
incantations, and thus gave me the opportunity 
to kiss her — at first clandestinely, then openly. 
But my pain, as I told her, was only aggravated ; 
now the sting penetrated to my heart. "You 
must carry a bee upon your lips," said I, " for 
your kisses are both honeyed and stinging." Just 
then we saw Clio approaching, and parted. I 
felt encouraged. I guarded Leucippe's kiss upon 
my lips as if it were a corporeal treasure left 
there. (The Praise of the Kiss.) ix-x. At 
supper, Satyrus interchanged my cup with 
Leucippe's, upon which I kissed the place her 
lips had touched ; and when the cups were again 
exchanged, she imitated me. Thus we passed 
the time in drinking kisses to one another. After 
supper Satyrus notified me that Leucippe's 
mother had gone to bed unwell, and that he 
should draw off Clio. This was my opportunity. 
Armed with wine, love, hope and solitude, I em- 
braced Leucippe boldly, and would have done 
more, when we heard a noise, and parted again. 
It was made by Satyrus, who, keeping watch, 
had heard someone coming. 

xi. My father now made preparations to con- 
clude my marriage at once : he had dreamed that 
while he was celebrating the nuptial rites, the 
torches were suddenly extinguished. He there- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 49 

fore hastened the purchase of the wedding- 
clothes and jewels. Among the latter was a 
necklace, containing a rosy hyacinth and a golden 
glowing amethyst and three other stones set 
together so that they resembled an eye. Among 
the former was a purple robe bordered with gold. 
Its dye was the genuine Tyrian, such as dyes 
the robe of Aphrodite herself. (Description of 
necklace and of robe. Legend of discovery of 
the purple-fish.) xii. The marriage being fixed 
for the morrow, my father was sacrificing, when 
an eagle swooped down and bore of! the victim. 
By reason of this unfavorable omen, the marriage 
was postponed ; and the soothsayers prescribed a 
midnight sacrifice to Zeus Xenios upon the sea- 
shore, as the eagle had flown that way. 

xiii. Now before the war there lived in Byzan- 
tium a young, wealthy and profligate orphan 
named Callisthenes, who upon hearsay fell in 
love with Leucippe, though he had never seen 
her. Her hand being refused him because of his 
profligacy, he resolved to carry her off. xiv. 
Then the war broke out, and Callisthenes learned 
that Leucippe had been sent to us ; but his plan 
was aided by an oracle rendered to the Byzan- 
tines : " There is an is 1 ^.nd whose inhabitants bear 
the name of a plant; this land makes both a 
strait and an isthmus with the shore; there 
Hephaestus rejoices in the possession of blue- 
eyed Pallas : thither I command you to bear 
sacrifices to Hercules. " This oracle Sostratus 
himself, who was one of the Byzantine com- 
manders, interpreted as meaning Tyre: for the 
5 



50 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Phoenicians derive their name from that of the 
palm-tree; the city is in fact connected with the 
mainland by an isthmus, under which the sea 
nevertheless flows in a strait; and certain sacred 
olive-trees (Pallas) nearby, are fertilized by the 
ashes of fires (Hephaestus) burning round them. 
This interpretation was approved by Chaerephon, 
Sostratus's colleague, (who added other mar- 
vels: a Sicilian spring where fire mingles with 
the water, — the water not quenching the fire, the 
fire not heating the water ; a river in Spain, which 
emits musical sounds when the wind, like a plec- 
trum upon a lyre, plays upon its surface; and a 
lake in Libya, so rich in gold, like the soil of 
India, that the Libyan maidens by merely plung- 
ing into it a pitch-smeared pole — the pitch being 
hook and bait as it were — fish out the gold.) xv. 
In obedience to this oracle a sacred embassy 
came to Tyre ; and one of its members was Callis- 
thenes himself. The sacrifice was most sumptu- 
ous. Incense of cassia, frankincense and crocus 
vied with flowers — narcissus, roses and myrtle — 
to perfume the air, so that there was a gale 
of sweetness. (Sacrifice and victims described.) 
xvi-xviii. As my stepmother was unwell, and 
as Leucippe feigned illness in order that we might 
have a meeting, Calligone and Leucippe's mother 
went together to view the sacrifice. Callisthenes 
consequently supposing Calligone to be Leucippe 
(for he recognized Leucippe's mother Panthea, 
the wife of Sostratus) and in fact much taken 
with the beauty of Calligone herself, pointed her 
out to a slave, with directions that she be ab- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 5 1 

ducted by pirates during another ceremony to be 
performed by the maidens upon the sea-shore. 
The sacred mission performed, he withdrew in 
his own ship, with the other Byzantine ships, but 
put in at Sarapta, not far off. There he bought 
a small boat, which his slave Zeno — himself a 
sturdy rogue — manned with piratical fishermen of 
the neighborhood and sailed to an island called 
Rhodope's Tomb, quite near the city. There they 
lay in ambush. But Callisthenes was not obliged 
to await the maiden's ceremony. For the event 
portended by the eagle took place at the very 
sacrifice which was intended to avert it. We had 
all gone to the shore to make our offering to 
Zeus, Zeno observing us closely. At his signal 
the boat from Rhodope's Tomb sailed in with ten 
young fellows aboard ; eight others disguised as 
women, but armed, were among the celebrants. 
These all together, shouting and drawing their 
swords, rushed upon us and made off with Calli- 
gone in their boat, which sailed away like a bird. 
Off Sarapta, Callisthenes took her aboard and 
escaped to the open sea. In our confusion we 
could do nothing. I breathed freely when I 
found my marriage so unexpectedly broken off, 
but couldn't help feeling sorry for Calligone ! 

xix. Now I continued to court Leucippe, and 
at length persuaded her to receive me at night 
in her chamber. Panthea, who accompanied 
Leucippe to bed, always had the door locked in- 
side and out; but Satyrus had the keys dupli- 
cated, and gained over Clio. xx. Conops, a 
slanderous, gluttonous slave in the house, suspect- 



52 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

ing our plans, kept watch with his door open, so 
that it was difficult to escape his observation. 
Satyrus, wishing to win him, joked with him 
about his name (Gnat). Conops pretended to 
return the joke, but in fact showed his ill-nature 
by telling this fable of the gnat : xxi. " The lion 
complained that, though Prometheus had created 
him the most formidable of beasts, he was yet 
afraid of the cock. Prometheus answered that 
the lion's own cowardice was to blame; whereat 
the lion wished for death rather than such dis- 
grace. But then he happened to meet the ele- 
phant, whose great ears, he observed, were in- 
cessantly flapping. 'Why not give your ears a 
rest ? ' asked the lion." ' See that gnat ? ' replied 
the elephant. ' If he once gets into my ear, I'm 
done for.' ' At any rate/ the lion thought, 'I'm 
at least as much luckier than the elephant, as a 
cock is mightier than a gnat ! ' And he decided 
to live on. Now you see," concluded Conops, 
" the gnat is not so inconsiderable after all : even 
the elephant fears him." Satyrus saw the covert 
meaning. " By all means make the most of your 
fable," said he, "but let me tell you another: 
xxii. The boastful gnat said to the lion: 'You 
think yourself the most valorous of beasts — you 
that scratch and bite like a woman ! Your size ? 
Your beauty? — to be sure, you have a big chest 
and shoulders, and a bristly mane — but how 
about the rest of you? As for me, the whole 
expanse of air is mine ; my beauty is that of all 
the flowery meads, which I put on or off at will 
when I alight or when I fly. Nor is my strength 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 53 

to be despised, for I am all a weapon— at once a 
trumpet and a javelin, at once a bow and an 
arrow, at once the warrior and his dart. I am 
there and away in a moment ; in an instant I stay 
and go. I ride all round my victim, and laugh 
at him as he dances about to find me. But 
enough of words! Come, let's have it out.' 
And he stung the lion's lips, he jumped into his 
eyes ; he stung him where the hair was short ! 
The lion snapped and gasped and writhed in 
vain: the gnat slipped between his very teeth— 
his empty gnashing teeth! At length, wearied 
out with fighting shadows, the lion lay down; 
and the gnat flew off, trumpeting victory. As he 
circled more and more widely in his triumph, he 
flew into a spider's web, which he had failed to 
notice; but the spider didn't fail to notice him! 
So," ended Satyrus with a laugh, " ware spiders." 
xxiii. A few days later, Satyrus asked Conops 
to supper, and drugged his last cup of wine, so 
that Conops fell asleep as soon as he reached his 
room. Then Satyrus called me, and we went 
together to Leucippe's chamber. Satyrus re- 
mained at the door, and Clio admitted me, torn 
between conflicting hope and fear, joy and pain. 
At that moment Panthea had a horrible dream : 
a robber armed with a naked sword threw 
Leucippe on the ground and disembowelled her. 
Frightened out of her sleep, Panthea ran to 
Leucippe's room, which she reached just as I 
had gotten into bed. When I heard the door 
open, I leaped out and ran through the door, and 
Satyrus and I each escaped to his own room. 



54 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

xxiv. First Panthea fainted; then she boxed 
Clio's ears; then she reproached Leucippe: 
" What a wedding is this ! Better have been 
ravished in the war; then your misfortune would 
have been free from dishonor : as it is, you suffer 
misfortune and dishonor too. What a fulfilment 
of my dream! Alas, who did it — some slave?" 
xxv. Sure that I had escaped, Leucippe replied : 
" Your reproaches are undeserved. I know not 
who that person may have been — whether a god, 
a demigod, or a burglar; all I know is, I was so 
frightened I couldn't cry out. But my virginity 
is intact." Panthea fell down again, groaning. 
Meanwhile Satyrus and I resolved to get away 
before day, when Clio under torture would have 
to confess everything, xxvi-xxvii. Telling the 
porter we were going to our mistresses, we be- 
took ourselves to Clinias ; and while we were in 
the street trying to rouse him, Clio joined us, de- 
termined to escape the torture. Accordingly 
Clio was taken off by boat in the care of one of 
Clinias's slaves; but we agreed to stay long 
enough to persuade Leucippe to escape; if she 
would not, we too should remain, and commit 
ourselves to Fortune. So we took a short sleep, 
and returned home at daybreak, xxviii. Pan- 
thea now demanded Clio for the torture, but 
couldn't find her. Returning therefore to Leu- 
cippe, she cried: "Why don't you tell me the 
trick of this plot? Here's Clio run away!" 
Leucippe, still further reassured, offered to sub- 
mit to a test of her virginity. " Yes," said her 
mother, " and call witnesses to our dishonor ! " 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 55 

And she flung out of the room. xxix. Leucippe 
was sorrowful, ashamed, and angry, all at once — 
sorrowful because she had been caught, ashamed 
at her mother's reproaches, angry because her 
word had been doubted. (Shame, sorrow, and 
anger: their causes and effects.) xxx. Hence, 
when I sent Satyrus to sound her on the ques- 
tion of an elopement, she anticipated him, beg- 
ging to be taken from her mother's sight. Dur- 
ing my father's absence on a journey, we spent 
two days in preparation, xxxi. At supper on 
the second day, Satyrus drugged Panthea, 
drugged Leucippe's new chambermaid (whom he 
had won over by making feigned love to her), 
and drugged the porter ! (Conops happened to be 
absent on an errand.) Then Leucippe and I, 
Satyrus, and two servants, entered a carriage in 
which Clinias was waiting for us at the door; 
and drove to Sidon, and on to Berytus, where 
we found a vessel ready to sail. Without in- 
quiring her destination, we embarked, and then 
learned that she was bound for Alexandria, 
xxxii-xxxiii. With much confusion she got 
under way, and left the harbor. A courteous 
young fellow-passenger, who made common stock 
of provisions with us, gave his name as Menelaus, 
an Egyptian. Clinias and I also told him our 
names and country. Upon his inquiring our 
reason for this voyage, we asked him to begin by 
relating his own. (xxxiv. While hunting, he 
had accidentally killed his favorite; and he was 
now returning from banishment for this offense. 
Clinias wept, remembering Charicles, and upon 



56 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Menelaus's inquiry, told him that story) and I 
told mine. To enliven their sadness, I proposed 
an amatory discussion, — Leucippe being absent, 
asleep below. " Clinias is lucky," said I ; 
" always inveighing against women, he now finds 
in you a companion of similar tastes." (Discus- 
sion: boys vs. women (xxxvi-xxxviii).) 

Book III 

i-ii. On the third day a gale came up. 
(Storm vividly described.) iii-iv. Wearied out, 
the helmsman abandoned the tiller, got ready the 
boat, and ordering the sailors to embark, himself 
took the lead ( !). They were about to cut loose 
when the passengers also tried to jump in. The 
sailors threatened them with knives and axes; 
the passengers armed themselves with what 
they could find — broken oars and benches; a 
novel sea-fight ensued. (Fight described.) The 
ship soon struck a sunken rock and went to 
pieces. Those who were drowned at once were 
happier than those who survived to drown later, 
for a lingering death by drowning is fearful be- 
yond measure: the eye has death before it con- 
tinually in a shape vast and overwhelming as the 
sea itself. Some were dashed against rocks and 
perished, others were impaled on broken spars 
like fish ; some swam about half-dead. v. Leu- 
cippe and I floated upon a fragment of the prow, 
which some good genius had preserved for us. 
Menelaus and Satyrus and some other passengers 
had a bit of mast; and Clinias rode the waves 
upon a spar, calling " Hold fast, Clitophon ! " 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 57 

Just then a wave washed over him, and we cried 
out; but rolling towards us, by good luck it 
passed, and we again caught sight of Clinias and 
the spar on the crest of the sea. I prayed to 
Poseidon to save us or give us a speedy death; 
and if death, then death together and a common 
tomb — even in one fish. Soon the wind abated 
and the waves subsided. Menelaus and his 
companions were cast upon a part of the Egyp- 
tian coast at that time the haunt of brigands. 
Leucippe and I at evening came by chance to 
Pelusium, where landing we thanked the gods 
and bewailed Clinias and Satyrus, believing 
them to have perished, vi. (Description of the 
statue of Zeus Casius.) Having made our 
prayers, and asked tidings of Clinias and Saty- 
rus, — for the god was held to be prophetic, — we 
saw at the rear of the temple two paintings by 
Evanthes, (one of Andromeda, the other of 
Prometheus. Their having so much in common 
had probably led the painter to treat them 
together: both were prisoners upon rocks; both 
had a beast for executioner — one marine, the 
other aerial; both had an Argive deliverer- 
Perseus and Hercules respectively — the one 
aiming at the bird of Zeus, the other at the 
monster of Poseidon, vii. Andromeda lay in a 
hollow of the rock as large as her body, — a 
natural hollow, as its surface showed. 'A 
statue' — you would have said, if you looked at 
her beauty, but if at the chains and the monster — 
' A tomb.' Beauty and fear were mingled in her 
countenance, beauty blooming in her eyes, fear 



58 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

paling her cheeks; yet were her cheeks not so 
pale but that they were tinged with color, nor 
her eyes so lovely but that they languished like 
fading violets. Thus the painter had adorned 
her with beautiful fear. Her arms were 
chained; her wrists and fingers hanging like 
clusters of the vine; arms white, fingers blood- 
less; attire bridal, white, of fine silken texture. 
The monster : only his head was above water, the 
jaws open to his shoulders; but his body was 
visible in outline beneath — with scales, spines, 
and tail. Perseus was descending from the sky, 
his mantle about his shoulders, his body naked; 
winged sandals on his feet, and on his head a 
cap like Hades's. His left hand grasped as a 
shield the Gorgon's head with its glaring eyes and 
bristling snakes, his right of weapon half sword 
half sickle — a straight blade in common, then a 
division into two — one proceeding to the point, 
the other bent round into a hook. viii. Prome- 
theus was shown chained to the rock ; against his 
thigh the bird, braced upon the points of his 
talons and with his beak searching the wound 
for his victim's liver, which appeared in the open- 
ing; Prometheus's one thigh was contracted in 
pain, the other stretched tense to the very toes; 
his face convulsed, eyebrows contracted, lips 
drawn, teeth visible: you could almost pity the 
picture. Hercules stood armed with a bow, and 
the shaft already on it. The left hand held the 
bow ; the right drew the string to his breast — all 
in a moment. Prometheus was divided between 
hope and fear; with hope he looked toward his 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 59 

deliverer, and with fear back to his wounded 
side.) 

ix. From Pelusium we were proceeding on a 
hired vessel up the Nile to Alexandria, when, 
opposite a town, we heard a shout — " The Herds- 
men ! " and saw the bank thronged with savage- 
looking men of black complexion, like mongrel 
Ethiopians. Four of them boarded us, carried 
away everything on the boat including our money, 
took us ashore bound, and left us in a hut, with 
guards who were to take us next day to their 
chief, x. That night, I silently soliloquized upon 
the calamities I had brought upon Leucippe: 
" Our case would be sorry enough had we fallen 
into the hands of Greeks ; but there at least our 
supplications would be understood. Here, charm 
I like a Siren, I plead to deaf ears ; I am reduced 
to gestures ; I must perform mv lamentations in 
pantomimic dance. But faithful tender Leu- 
cippe — what preparations are these for thy wed- 
ding! Thy bridal chamber a prison, the earth 
thv bed, thy necklace a noose, thy bridesman a 
thief, tears for thy nuptial hymn. O sea, in 
sparing us thou hast destroyed us." xi. Thus I 
lamented, tearlessly; (for though tears flow 
freelv enough in ordinary griefs and relieve the 
swelling of the heart, excessive sorrow turns 
them back upon their fount, so that, returning, 
they exasperate the wound of the soul.) Leu- 
cippe too being silent, I asked her why she did 
not speak to me. "The death of my soul," she 
answered, "has been anticipated by the death of 
my voice." xii. At daybreak, a shag-haired 



60 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

villain on a shaggy horse rode up bareback, with 
orders to bring away for sacrifice any maiden he 
might find. Leucippe, who clung shrieking to 
me, they dragged away. Me they beat, and left 
with the other prisoners to follow more slowly, 
xiii. A little way from the village we were over- 
taken by a body of about fifty soldiers. The 
brigands resisted, pelting them with rough stony 
clods of earth, which the heavy-armed troops re- 
ceived on their long shields with impunity. 
Then, when their assailants were tired, they 
opened their ranks, and allowed the light armed 
troops to issue forth. These, supported by the 
heavy troops, attacked the pirates with swords 
and spears. At length the majority of the pirates 
were cut to pieces by a body of cavalry which 
came up; and we prisoners were taken by the 
soldiers and sent to the rear. xiv. That evening 
the commander (Charmides: named IV. ii) 
heard our story, and promised to arm us all, as 
he meant to attack the pirates' stronghold. At 
my request he gave me a horse too, which I put 
through its military paces, to his admiration. 
Then he made me his guest, listened more par- 
ticularly to my troubles, and expressed his 
sympathy by tears. (Sympathy often leads to 
friendship.) He also gave me an Egyptian ser- 
vant, xv. Next morning we perceived the 
pirates before us, on the far side of a trench, 
which it was our object to fill up. Near it was 
an extemporized altar of clay, and a coffin. Soon 
two men, whom I could not make out because 
of their armor, led Leucippe, whom I saw plainly, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 6 1 

to the altar, a priest all the while chanting, as 
appeared from the position of his mouth and the 
distortion of his face. Then all the rest retired 
from the altar; and one of the two bound Leu- 
cippe on the ground to four pegs, like an image 
of Marsyas, and with a sword disembowelled 
her. They roasted the entrails upon the altar, 
and distributed them among the pirates, who ate 
them. Amid the shout of horror that rose from 
our army, I was thunderstruck into silence. 
Niobe's fabled metamorphosis may have been 
some such paralysis by grief. The two men 
placed the body in a coffin, covered it with a lid, 
and, after throwing down the altar, hurried back 
to their companions without looking behind them, 
as the priest had commanded. 

xvi. By evening we had filled and crossed the 
trench, and I went to the coffin prepared to stab 
myself. " Leucippe," I cried, " thy death is 
lamentable not only because violent and in a 
strange land, but because thou hast been sacri- 
ficed to purify the most impure; because thou 
didst look upon thine own anatomy ; because thy 
body and thy bowels have received an accursed 
sepulchre, — the one here, the other in such wise 
that their burial has become the nourishment of 
robbers. And this the gods saw unmoved, and 
accepted such an offering! But now receive 
from me thy fitting libation/' xvii. About to 
cut my throat, I saw two men running up, and 
paused, thinking that they were pirates and would 
kill me. They were Menelaus and Satyrus! 
Still I could not rejoice in their safety, and I 



6j the greek romances in 

resisted their attempt to take my sword. " If you 
deprive me of this sword, wherewith I would 
end my sorrows in death, the inward sword of 
my grief will inflict deathless sorrows upon me. 
Let me die: Leucippe dead, I will not live." 
" Leucippe lives ! " said Menelaus, and, tapping 
upon the coffin, he summoned her to testify to his 
veracity. Leucippe actually rose, disembowelled 
as she was, and rushed to my embrace, xviii. 
" Soon," Menelaus replied to my astonished ques- 
tions, " you shall see her intact ; but cover your 
face: — I'm going to invoke Hecate." I did so; 
whereupon he muttered words of marvel ; at the 
same time removing certain contrivances from 
Leucippe's body. Then, "Uncover," said he, 
which I did fearfully, for I thought to see 
Hecate. But I saw only Leucippe, unharmed! 
Menelaus now began to satisfy my curiosity: 
xix. " I am, you remember, an Egyptian : in 
fact, I own property about this very village, and 
know the people there. After I had been cast 
ashore and taken to the pirate chief, some of 
the pirates recognized me, struck off my chains, 
and begged me to join them. I consented, and 
claimed Satyrus too as my slave. He, they said, 
would be granted me if I first gave proof of 
courage in their cause. They had just received 
an oracle bidding them offer up a maiden, taste 
her liver, put her body in a coffin, and retire so 
that the enemy might take the site of the sacri- 
fice." xx-xxii. Satyrus now took up the story. 
" The day before the sacrifice, the pirates took a 
ship on which was travelling a theatrical reciter 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 63 

of Homer. When the crew had been killed and 
the ship sunk, there floated ashore to us a chest 
unperceived by the pirates. Among its contents' 
was a stage-sword, whose blade could be pushed 
almost wholly into the hollow hilt. It had doubt- 
less been used to inflict mimic wounds. I at once 
proposed to Menelaus to procure a sheepskin bag 
stuff it with guts and blood, and conceal it under 
Leucippe's dress, which, according to the oracle 
was not to be removed for the sacrifice. Mene- 
laus, in proof of his courage and devotion as 
demanded by the pirates, was to perform the sup- 
posed slaughter— the blade to protrude at first 
only far enough to rip up the bag, but afterwards 
for the benefit of the spectators, to appear at its 
full length, covered with blood, as if it had 
actually pierced Leucippe's body. We could 
then lay her safely in the coffin, as no one was to 
approach. Menelaus agreed to take the risk for 
friendship's sake, especially as we learned, both 
from Leucippe and from the pirates, that you 
Chtophon, still lived. Fortune co-operated with 
us; for when Menelaus approached the pirate 
chief to volunteer, the chief imposed the task 
upon him— the pirates' law requiring new- 
comers to be the first to make sacrifice— and even 
entrusted the victim to our care. All was carried 
out as we had planned, and as you saw." 

xxiii. I next inquired what had become of 
Chmas. " I don't know," said Menelaus ; " when 
I last saw him, he was clinging to the spar." In 
the midst of my joy I lamented: my happiness 
could not be entire, as long as he whom I loved 



64 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

next only after Leucippe, was lost; and I be- 
wailed his fate, — not only dead but unburied. 
Then we returned to my tent, where we passed 
the night. Our adventures soon became known, 
xxiv. At dawn I introduced Menelaus to Char- 
mides, who received him well, and who, inquiring 
the strength of the enemy, learned that there 
were about ten thousand. These, he said, could 
easily be beaten by his own five thousand, who 
besides, were to be reinforced by two thousand 
more from the Delta and from Heliopolis. At 
that moment messengers arrived to say that the 
reinforcements from the Delta would delay their 
start five days, because the Sacred Bird, bear- 
ing its father's sepulchre, had appeared among 
the troops just as they were on the point of 
marching, (xxv. This sacred bird, they told 
me, was the Ethiopian Phoenix. He is of the 
size of a peacock, but of yet more gorgeous 
plumage. He owes allegiance to the sun, as 
a mark of whose dominion he wears upon 
his head a radiant circle. When after many 
years he dies, his son hollows out a mass of 
myrrh for the sepulchre, — wherein he bears the 
body to Egypt, attended by many other birds as 
a guard of honor. Upon arriving at the City of 
the Sun — Heliopolis — he waits for the priest to 
appear, who bears from the sanctuary a book 
containing a picture of the Phoenix, and thereby 
identifies the corpse, which the young Phoenix 
aids him by exhibiting, and so argues for its 
burial : eo-nv iTnrdcpLos croc/wmj?. There the 
priests bury it. Thus the bird during life is by 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 65 

its breeding an Ethiopian, but after death, by its 
burial, an Egyptian.) 

Book IV 

i. Charmides awaited the reinforcements at the 
village we had left; and there he assigned us a 
house. Upon my urging Leucippe to profit by 
the opportunity Fortune now afforded us, she 
related a dream she had had: The night before, 
when she fully expected to be sacrificed, Artemis 
had appeared to her, saying, " You shall be 
saved; but remain a maid till I lead thee to the 
altar; and none but Clitophon shall be thy hus- 
band." Disappointed as I was, I was yet cheered 
by this dream, especially as I also recalled a 
dream I had had at the same time : I saw Aphro- 
dite's temple, and her statue within; but when I 
would have entered, the gates closed, and the 
goddess said, " Thou mayest not enter as yet, 
but wait a little, and thou shalt not only enter, 
but be my priest." 

ii. Charmides, the general, now had an oppor- 
tunity to see Leucippe, for we went at his invita- 
tion to see a hippopotamus that had been cap- 
tured. (Hippopotamus described.) iii. Char- 
mides at once became enamored of Leucippe, 
(and to keep her there gave us a long account 
of the nature and food of the animal, and of the 
mode of his capture, iv-v. He furthermore told 
us some curious things about the elephant.) 

vi. Charmides now sent for Menelaus, and, 
offering -him money, requested his offices as 
mediator with Leucippe. Menelaus refused the 
6 



66 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

money, but promised to do what he could, and 
at once came and told me all. As we could not 
escape, and dared not antagonize Charmides, we 
resolved to deceive him. vii. Accordingly, 
Menelaus reported to Charmides that Leucippe 
after much difficulty had consented, but had 
begged a respite till she should reach Alexandria, 
as all here was too public. Charmides answered : 
" Make Fortune guarantee my safety till then, 
and I will wait. As it is, I know not whether I 
shall survive my battle with the pirates. And 
while I prepare for that outward battle, love 
wounds and burns me within. Let me have the 
physician that can heal these wounds. Let me at 
least kiss Leucippe." 

viii. Upon hearing this from Menelaus, I de- 
clared I would sooner die than permit another 
to enjoy Leucippe's kisses. (The Praise of the 
Kiss.) ix. While we took counsel, some one 
ran in to say that Leucippe had suddenly fallen 
in a fit. Running to where she lay on the 
ground, Menelaus and I tried to raise her; but 
she struck me in the face, and kicked him, and 
struggled unseemly. Charmides, who came up, 
thought the scene preconcerted, and looked 
suspiciously at Menelaus, but was soon convinced 
that the malady was genuine. We were com- 
pelled to bind Leucippe. Then I broke out: 
" Unbind her ! those tender hands cannot endure 
bonds. My embrace shall be her chain — what 
though her madness rage against me? Why 
should I live when she knows me not? Was it 
for this that Fortune saved us from our troubles 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 67 

at home, from a raging sea, from pirates — only 
that we might fall victims to madness? And 
when thou shalt have recovered, mayhap she 
reserves some still worse affliction: so that we 
must fear even the good luck of thy recovery. 
But provided thou dost indeed recover, let For- 
tune sport as she will." x. Menelaus opined 
that this sickness was nothing extraordinary, but 
normally incident to youth, when the blood, boil- 
ing through the veins, overflows the brain and 
drowns the spirit of reason. He readily pro- 
cured from Charmides the services of the army 
physician. A pill dissolved in oil and rubbed on 
Leucippe's head according to the doctor's orders, 
put her to sleep — a first step in the cure. I sat 
by her awake all night, and lamented : " Even in 
sleep thou are enchained. Are thy dreams 
rational, or are they frenzied like thy waking 
thoughts ? " She awoke still delirious. 

xi. Letters now came from the Satrap of 
Egypt, which must have ordered an immediate 
attack upon the robbers; for Charmides got his 
forces under arms, and next day moved them 
against the enemy. (The Nile, which down to 
a place called Cercasorus is one stream, there 
divides into three. The middle one flows on 
as before, and forms the Delta, but all are 
again divided and subdivided. They are navi- 
gable and potable throughout, and fertilize the 
land. xii. In fact, the Nile is everything to 
the Egyptians, — sea and land, swamp and 
river. There you see — strange spectacle — the 
ship and the plow, etc., together; where you 



68 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

have sailed, you sow, and anon your field has 
become a sea. The river punctually rises upon 
the expected day. Then land and water strug- 
gle, and neither gains the victory, for they are 
co-extensive. In the region inhabited by the 
robbers, the Nile when it retires leaves many 
ponds, shallow and muddy, on which the robbers 
sail, in light boats containing one person: any 
other kind would run aground at once. When 
water fails, these are taken on the sailor's back 
and carried to a deeper channel. Among the 
swamps, the uninhabited islands are covered 
with papyrus growing close, behind which, as 
behind a rampart, the pirates hold their councils 
and plan their ambushes. In the inhabited 
islands are rude huts, like a city walled in by the 
marsh.) The robbers had retired to the island of 
Nicochis, for this place, though connected with 
the land by a causeway, was otherwise wholly 
surrounded by the lagoons, xiii. The robbers 
resorted to stratagem. They sent out their old 
men bearing palm-branches, ostensibly as a 
badge of supplication, but really to conceal a 
column of spearmen behind them. If Charmides 
accepted their offer, there would be no fighting; 
if not, they were to lure him out on the causeway, 
and there the spearmen were to attack. So it 
turned out : Charmides refusing ransom, the old 
men begged that they might be put to death in 
their own homes, and that their city might be 
their tomb. Accordingly Charmides advanced 
along the causeway, xiv. Now the robbers had 
also stationed lookouts at the irrigation canals, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 69 

who, if they saw Charmides' force advance, were 
to cut the bank and let out the Nile upon him. 
At one moment, then, the old men fell back, the 
unmasked spearmen charged, and the waters 
rolled over the causeway. The troopers, com- 
pletely surprised, were thrown into ruinous con- 
fusion, and cut down, drowned, or routed. 
(Details.) Charmides himself was killed at 
the first attack. Here was a land-battle on 
water, and a wreck on land. The pirates were 
unduly elated at their success, which they at- 
tributed not to fraud but to valor; for these 
Egyptians know only extremes — of abject fear 
and overweening isolence. 

xv. After ten days of madness, Leucippe one 
night exclaimed in her sleep : " Gorgias, 'tis thou 
hast made me mad." I reported these words to 
Menelaus, wondering whether there were a 
Gorgias in the place. As we went out, a young 
man accosted me, saying, " I am come to save 
you and your wife." "Are you Gorgias?" 
" No, I am Chaereas. Gorgias was an Egyptian 
soldier, killed in the battle with the robbers. 
Having fallen in love with Leucippe, he induced 
your servant to administer to her a philter, which 
proved too strong and produced madness. From 
Gorgias's servant, whom Fortune seems to have 
saved for your special behoof, I learned these 
facts. He knows the antidote as well, and will 
cure Leucippe for four pieces of gold." " Bring 
me the man," said I. Then I mauled my Egyp- 
tian till he confessed, and put him in prison. 
xvi. Chaereas returned with Gorgias's servant, 



70 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

who, to allay my fears, compounded his drug in 
my presence, and himself drank off half the mix- 
ture. " Now," he said, " if you give the re- 
mainder to Leucippe, she will sleep well to-night, 
and awake cured." Then he went away to sleep 
off the effects of what he had taken, xvii. With 
a prayer, I administered the potion to Leucippe, 
who fell asleep; and I addressed her thus: 
" Shalt thou indeed recover ? Speak to me again 
prophetically in thy sleep ; for thy inspired utter- 
ance concerning Gorgias was true. So that thy 
sleep, wherein thou dreamest wisdom, is happier 
than thy frenzied waking hours." At dawn she 
awoke, calling " Clitophon ! " I sprang to her 
side, and found her fully recovered, without the 
least remembrance of her malady. I unbound 
her, told her what had happened, and reassured 
her in her confusion thereat. Gladly then I. 
paid Gorgias's servant. . Our money was safe, as 
Satyrus, who had it, had not been despoiled by 
the robbers, any more than had Menelaus. xviii. 
Meanwhile, new troops had extirpated the rob- 
bers and razed their city ; and the Nile now being 
safe we embarked once more for Alexandria, 
taking our new friend Chaereas along. (A 
fisherman from Pharos, he had served on the 
fleet against the robbers, and was now dis- 
charged.) The river, which because of their 
depredations had been deserted, was again 
crowded ; and a pleasant thing it was to hear the 
songs of the sailors and the mirth of the pas- 
sengers, and to see so many craft passing up and 
down: the river itself was celebrating, as it were. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 7 1 

(Description of the Nile; the taste of the water; 
the Egyptian mode of drinking it ; the crocodile a 
strange beast.) 

Book V 

i. In three days we arrived at Alexandria. 
(I admired the long colonnades from the Gate 
of the Sun to the Gate of the Moon; and the 
great open place half-way between, with its 
many streets and its moving crowds — evhr]/jo<; 
awoBrj/jLLa. The quarter called after Alexander 
is a second city, with more streets and more 
colonnades. The size and the population vied 
with each other : How could any population fill so 
vast a city? How could any city hold so vast a 
population? ii. It happened to be the feast of 
Serapis, the Zeus of the Egyptians ; and after 
sunset the illumination brought on another day, 
the beauty of the city now rivalling that of the 
heavens. We saw also Zeus Milichius and the 
temple of Zeus Uranius, and prayed him to end 
our troubles. But Fortune still reserved other 
trials for us.) iii. Chaereas had for some time 
loved Leucippe; and his motive for telling me 
about Gorgias's philtre was only that he might 
preserve her for himself, and become intimate 
with us. He now plotted to get possession of 
her. As a seafaring man he easily gathered a 
band of pirates, to whom he gave his instructions ; 
and then he invited us to celebrate his birthday 
at Pharos. When we left the house, a hawk pur- 
suing a swallow brushed Leucippe's head with 
his wing. Startled by this evil omen, I prayed 
to Zeus for a clearer sign : when, turning round, 



72 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

I found myself before a picture-shop in which 
hung a painting of like significance. It repre- 
sented Philomela revealing her wrongs to Procne 
by means of the tapestry. A slave held up the 
cloth, to the figures on which Philomela pointed : 
herself struggling dishevelled in the arms of 
Tereus, her right hand gouging out his eyes, her 
left drawing her dress over her half-naked breast. 
Procne gave sign of her understanding and her 
rage. Elsewhere appeared the two sisters show- 
ing to Tereus the remnants of his supper — the 
head and hands of his child. They laugh and 
are afraid — both at once; Tereus leaps up from 
his couch, drawing his sword against them ; his 
leg strikes and overturns the table, which is on 
the very point of falling, iv. Upon Menelaus's 
advice we put off the excursion to Pharos be- 
cause of these portents, and notified Chaereas, 
who, much vexed, said he should come again 
the next day. (v. At Leucippe's request, I re- 
lated the story of Philomela, Procne, and 
Tereus.) 

vi. We had avoided the trap for only a day. 
Next morning Chaereas appeared, and as we 
were ashamed to refuse him again, we sailed to 
Pharos. Menelaus remained at home, saying he 
did not feel well. Chaereas showed us the light- 
house with its marvellous foundation of rock, a 
cloud-capped mountain in the midst of the sea; 
and the tower on whose summit the light is dis- 
played — a second pilot for ships. Then he took 
us to a house on the shore, at the very end of the 
island, vii. At evening he made a pretext to 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 73 

leave us. Soon we heard a great shouting at the 
door, and a number of burly fellows burst into 
the room and dragged Leucippe away. Armed 
though they were, I rushed into the midst of 
them ; but fell wounded in the thigh. They put 
Leucippe into a boat, and fled. By this time, the 
noise had brought thither the commandant of the 
island, whom I had known in the army, and 
whom I now besought to pursue the pirates. He 
had me carried aboard one of the numerous ships 
waiting in the port, and at once gave chase. 
When the pirates saw us drawing near, they ex- 
hibited the maiden on deck with her hands tied 
behind her back, and one of them, crying out 
" Here, take your prize ! " cut off her head and 
threw the trunk overboard. As my companions 
restrained me from throwing myself after it, I 
begged them to recover the body for me, which 
two sailors accordingly did. The consequent 
delay enabled the pirates to gain distance, and by 
the time we were near them again, they had 
found allies in an approaching shipload of purple- 
fishers, pirates like themselves. Seeing the odds 
against him, our commandant retired ; and I broke 
forth : " Now indeed, Leucippe, hast thou died a 
double death, divided as thou art between sea 
and land. And the division is unfair ; for though 
I seem to possess the greater portion of thee, yet 
the sea, in possessing its little — thy head — pos- 
sesses thee all. But since Fortune denies me thy 
head, I will kiss thy neck." 

viii. After interring the body, I returned to 
Alexandria, unwillingly had my wound dressed, 



74 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

and, urged by Menelaus, decided to endure life. 
But at the end of six months my grief had some- 
what abated. For time medicines grief, and the 
sun is a cheerful thing, and even violent sorrow 
yields to the distractions of life day by day. I 
was walking the public square, when who should 
come up behind me but Clinias ! After my sur- 
prise and my joy at seeing him were somewhat 
calmed, he told me his story : ix. " The yard to 
which I clung was caught up by a tremendous 
wave and dashed against a sunken rock. I was 
hurled off as from a sling. I swam the rest of 
the day, growing more and more exhausted, till, 
abandoning myself to Fortune, I at last perceived 
a ship steering my way. I was rescued and 
treated well. I knew some of the people aboard, 
who were bound for Sidon. x. There, after two 
days, we arrived, and I begged my acquaintances 
not to mention that they had saved me from 
shipwreck, as I did not wish it known in Tyre that 
I had gone off with you. I had been away only 
five days; and as I had told my servants to say 
that I had gone to the country for ten days, 
there was no need of explanations upon my 
return. Your father did not even return from 
his journey (II. xxx) till two days after my 
arrival. Then he found a letter from Leucippe's 
father, which had come only a day after we had 
gone, offering you her hand! At this, and at 
your flight, he was greatly chagrined, both be- 
cause you had lost the prize and because For- 
tune had made you miss it by so little : for if the 
letter had come earlier, you would not have run 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 75 

away. But he thought it better to write nothing 
to Sostratus about your flight, and to persuade 
Panthea also to keep the secret ; for he felt sure 
you would be found, and would return as soon as 
you heard the news. He made every effort to 
find you, and only a few days ago Diophantus of 
Tyre returning from Egypt reported that he had 
seen you there. I at once took ship hither. You 
had better decide upon some plan ; your father is 
sure to be here soon." 

xi. Hereupon I railed at Fortune : " Now's the 
time indeed for Sostratus to grant me Leucippe ! 
Doubtless he computed it so exactly in order not 
to interfere with our flight! My happiness 
comes just a day too late. After death, a bridal ; 
after the dirge, the nuptial hymn. And what 
bride does Fortune give me? One of whom she 
grants me not even the corpse entire." I decided 
neither to return, nor to await my father. How 
could I face him, after running away so shame- 
fully, and after corrupting the charge he had re- 
ceived in trust from his brother? Just as I 
had resolved, then, to run away once more, Mene- 
laus and Satyrus came up. " Here's exactly the 
chance: " said Satyrus, " Melitta, a beautiful rich 
young widow of Ephesus, who has lost her hus- 
band at sea, is madly in love with Clitophon ; but 
he'll none of her. I suppose he thinks Leucippe 
will come to life again. Melitta wants him — 
I'll not say for a husband, but for a master." 
xii. " Beauty, and riches, and love," said Mene- 
laus, " are not to be despised. I advise you to 
accept her offer." I reluctantly agreed, stipu- 



76 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

lating however that the consummation should not 
take place till our arrival at Ephesus, as I had 
sworn to be continent in the city where I had lost 
Leucippe. Satyrus took the news to Melitta, 
who almost fainted with joy. At her invitation 
I went to dine with her that evening, xiii. She 
covered me with kisses, which I received not 
without pleasure ; for she was white as milk, with 
golden hair and rosy cheeks, and a glance that 
sparkled with love. The feast was abundant, but 
she ate nothing, feeding her eyes upon me. 
(Love fills the soul, leaving no room even for 
food. The images of the beloved, the visual 
effluvia or simulacra from him, enter the heart 
through the eyes, and leave their imprint upon 
the mirror of the soul.) xiv. When night 
came, I declined her invitation to remain, but 
agreed to meet her next day at the temple of 
Isis. There, in the presence of Clinias and 
Menelaus, we plighted our troth before the 
divinity. Melitta took me for her husband and 
put me in possession of all her property; I swore 
to love her sincerely: both the promises to take 
effect upon our arrival at Ephesus. At our 
nuptial feast, when the guests wished us joy, 
Melitta spoke an earnest word in jest: "I have 
heard," she said to me sotto voce, "of a cenotaph, 
but never of a cenogam ! " 

xv. Next day we parted from Menelaus, but 
Clinias embarked with us, intending to return to 
Tyre after seeing me well settled at Ephesus. 
At night, Melitta again asked me to consummate 
our marriage: we had left, she urged, the terri- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 77 

tory sacred to Leucippe. xvi. "No," said I, 
"she died upon the ocean, and we are actually 
sailing over her tomb ! Perchance her spirit still 
wanders about us. First we must land in another 
country. Would you wed upon the unstable sea ? 
and have a bridal bed without a firm founda- 
tion?" "You argue sophistically," she an- 
swered, " to lovers every place is a bridal cham- 
ber — and the sea especially, for Aphrodite is 
daughter of the sea. And behold about you the 
symbols of happy marriage: the sail-yard cross- 
ing the mast like a yoke ; the intertwining ropes ; 
the rudder an emblem of the guidance of For- 
tune ; the swelling pregnant sail. The wind sings 
Hymen; the choir of Nereids, with Poseidon him- 
self, who wedded Amphitrite on the sea, shall 
make our bridal pomp!" "Nay," said I, "the 
sea itself has its laws, and among them this — 
that ships be kept pure of the pleasures of 
Aphrodite — either because ships are sacred, or 
because men should not wanton in the presence 
of peril." Thus I soothed and persuaded her, 
and the rest of the night we slept. 

xvii. After a voyage of five days we landed 
at Ephesus. Melitta ordered dinner at her mag- 
nificent house in town, and meanwhile we drove 
out to her country-place and walked in the garden. 
Suddenly a woman, miserably clad and heavily 
fettered, her head shaven, her hand holding a 
mattock, fell at our knees. "Have pity," she 
cried, "upon one who was free by birth, but is 
now by Fortune a slave." Melitta bade her rise 
and tell her story : She was a Thessalian, Lacaena 



78 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

by name ; had been sold by pirates to Sosthenes, 
Melitta's bailiff, for two thousand drachmas ; these 
she now hoped to procure to purchase her free- 
dom. Meanwhile she begged to be kept safe from 
Sosthenes, who because she would not yield to 
him had loaded her with chains and with the 
stripes she showed us on her back. I was deeply 
moved, for she seemed to have something of 
Leucippe about her. Melitta delivered her from 
her chains, promised to send her home free of 
ransom, and sent for Sosthenes and deprived him 
of his office. Then, having committed Lacaena 
to the maids to be washed, properly clad, and 
taken to the city, Melitta returned with me. 

xviii. While we sat at dinner, Satyrus mo- 
tioned to me to go out. I made an excuse and 
did so; whereupon he handed me a letter which 
I at once saw was in Leucippe's writing! 
"Master," it read " (so I must call thee since 
thou art my mistress's husband), for thee I have 
left my mother, and become a wanderer; suf- 
fered captivity among robbers, and become an 
expiatory offering; suffered again the pains of 
death; been sold, fettered, and scourged; been 
made to bear a mattock and hoe the ground — and 
all this that I might become to another man what 
thou art to another woman. Heaven forbid ! I 
have endured to the end; but thou, unharmed, 
unscourged, hast yielded. See to it then that thy 
wife keep her word to me: do thou become 
security for my ransom, and say that I will send 
it; but even shouldst thou be obliged to pay it, 
consider it then as the price of what I have borne 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 79 

for thy sake. Adieu, be happy. I who write this 
am still a maid." xix. This I read with con- 
flicting emotions : I burned, I paled, I wondered, 
I doubted, I rejoiced, I grieved. Satyrus told me 
that the woman I had seen in the country was 
indeed Leucippe, rendered unrecognizable by the 
cutting of her hair. xx. " She will tell you," 
said he, "whose corpse it was that you buried, 
and how she herself was saved. But now 
answer her letter and soothe her irritation. I 
have already told her it was against your will 
that you married Melitta." " Told her I married 
Melitta! You've spoiled all." "Nonsense! the 
whole town knows you're married to her." " I 
swear that I am not her husband." " Tush, man, 
you sleep with her ! " "I know it's incredible, 
but I am innocent of her." I then composed my 
answer to Leucippe : " I am unhappy in my happi- 
ness, that, having thee near, I see thee only as afar. 
Wait till the truth is known, and you will find 
that I too have remained a clean maid, if there be 
maidenhood in men. Meanwhile, judge me not 
too hardly." xxi. Giving Satyrus the letter, I 
returned to dinner, but could eat nothing, and in- 
deed judged it best to feign positive illness ; for I 
knew that Melitta would urge me to consummate 
our marriage that night, but felt, now I had re- 
covered Leucippe, that I could not even look at 
another woman. When I left the table, Melitta 
followed me, pleading most piteously, and justly 
too, that as we had now arrived, the fulfilment of 
my promise was due. I swore that I was ill ; 
and with fresh promises at last contrived to 
pacify her. 



80 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

xxii. Next day, after ascertaining that Leu- 
cippe had been well cared for, Melitta sent for 
her. " I hear," she said, " that you Thessalians 
are adepts in love-magic. Here, now, is your 
chance to return some of my kindness to you. 
That young man you saw with me " — " Your 
husband?" asked Leucippe, maliciously. "Hus- 
band ! " exclaimed Melitta. " Husband indeed ! 
why, he's continually calling upon some dead 
woman — Leucippe I think her name is — whom 
he prefers to me. Now help me win this dis- 
dainful youth: give me a philtre." Leucippe 
heard with joy this account of my fidelity; and 
believing it would be of no use to deny her magic 
skill, promised to gather the necessary herbs. 
Melitta was calmed by hope. 

xxiii. That night we had just sat down to 
dinner when there arose a great noise and tumult, 
and one of the servants rushed in breathless, ex- 
claiming, " Thersander's alive ; and here he is ! " 
(Thersander was Melitta's husband, who, accord- 
ing to certain of his servants that had been saved 
from the wreck, was drowned.) In a moment 
he was in the room. He had heard about me of 
course, and had hurried to surprise me. Rudely 
repulsing his wife, who ran to embrace him, he 
turned to me, crying "There's the paramour!", 
seized me by the hair, dashed me to the floor, and 
beat me unmercifully. I could have defended 
myself, but as I suspected who he was, I feared 
to do so. At length, when he was weary of beat- 
ing and I of philosophizing ( !), I asked: "Who 
are you? and. why do you maltreat me?" My 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 8 1 

words seemed still further to enrage him. He 
began buffeting me again, and calling for chains 
and handcuffs, had me fettered and locked up. 
xxiv. In the struggle I let fall Leucippe's letter, 
and Melitta picked it up. At first she thought it 
was one of her own letters to me; then she saw 
the name Leucippe, but still did not realize the 
truth, as she had so often heard that Leucippe 
was dead ; finally understanding the actual state 
of affairs, she was torn by shame, anger, jealousy, 
and love; — shame towards her husband, anger 
towards the letter, love which mollified her anger, 
and jealousy which intensified her love. Love 
remained the victor, xxv. When evening came, 
and Thersander was gone out to see a friend, 
Melitta won over my guard, and placing two of 
her own servants at the door, entered my prison. 
She threw herself down beside me on the floor, 
and began : " Miserable that I am, ever to have 
beheld you ! Hated, I love him who hates me ; 
tortured, I pity my torturer. Oh detestable pair 
— you and she — : the one laughs me to scorn ; the 
other, forsooth, has gone to make me a philtre ! " 
At this she threw Leucippe's letter on the floor, 
and I shuddered and cast down my eyes. 
" Alas ! " she went on, " 'tis for you I have lost 
my husband ; and yet you I can never possess, nor 
henceforward even see. He accuses me of 
adultery — an adultery fruitless and joyless, where- 
of I have gathered only the disgrace. Other 
wives at least receive enjoyment as the price of 
their infamy; I get infamy alone. Inhuman 
man, can nothing move you? Oh, the shame of 



82 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

it — you have held me in your arms, me, young, 
beautiful, and sick with love for you — and you 
have left me as another woman might leave me! 
May the god of love answer your prayers as you 
have answered mine ! " and she wept. xxvi. I 
still remained silent, with downcast eyes ; and she 
resumed: "What I have said was said by my 
anger and my grief; but oh, my love speaks 
now ! Have pity on me. I yield up the prospect 
of a married life with you; give me but one em- 
brace. Quench my fire. If I transgress 
modesty, I do not blush to unveil love's mysteries 
to a lover — himself an initiate. Now keep your 
promise : remember Isis and your oaths. Alas — 
against me even the dead come to life. O sea, 
thou didst bear me safe, but only to destroy me 
in resuscitating Thersander and Leucippe. Ah, 
Clitophon, to think that you were struck in my 
very presence, and I could do naught to save you ! 
But come, be mine now, for the first and last 
time. Tis my love for you that has restored 
Leucippe to you. Reject not the treasure of my 
love, the gift of Fortune. Consider, — Eros him- 
self speaks to you through my lips. Soon shall 
you be delivered from these chains, and I will 
find a place for you with my foster-brother, let 
Thersander do what we will. Leucippe is away 
till morning, gathering herbs ; Thersander, too, is 
out: let us take our opportunity." xxvii. Won 
over at last by this pleading — for Love is a 
mighty master of eloquence — I yielded. Melitta 
unbound me, and I, — considering that I should 
soon part from her, that I had recovered Leu^ 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 83 

cippe (so that this would be no consummation of 
a marriage, but only the relief of a love-sick 
soul), and that Eros himself would be angry if 
I resisted further, — returned her embraces to the 
full. 

Book VI 

i-ii. Melitta now arranged my escape. I was 
to be conducted to Clinias, whither Leucippe also 
would be sent. I gave Melitta my clothes, and 
she gave me hers, which she said became me very 
well ("I looked like Achilles in the picture")— 
and she begged me to keep them for remem- 
brance, as she should keep mine. With a female 
slave I passed the door-keeper, and found at the 
outer door of the house the guide provided for 
me. Upon the slave-girl's return, Melitta called 
the door-keeper, who was astonished to behold 
her whom he thought he had just let out. She 
explained that she had arranged the stratagem to 
give him plausible ground for saying that he had 
not connived at my escape; further, she gave 
him money and sent him away till matters should 
be arranged with Thersander. 

iii. As usual, Fortune began a new play with 
me. Whom should she send to meet me but 
Thersander, returning from his friend's — a worse 
danger indeed than the crowds of drunken revel- 
lers I had feared — celebrants of the festival of 
Artemis. Sosthenes the deposed bailiff had upon 
his master's return not only resumed his office, 
but plotted revenge upon Melitta. He had told 
Thersander of her relations with me ( — in fact 
he was the informer — ) ; then, to alienate Ther- 



84 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

sander wholly from Melitta, he offered him Leu- 
cippe, whom, he said, he had reserved for him. 
"He had heard that Thersander was alive, had 
believed it because he wished it so, but had said 
nothing in order to make sure of entrapping 
Melitta and her paramour. As for the girl, 
Melitta meant to liberate her, but Fortune had 
kept her for Thersander: she was then in the 
country, and could be locked up against his com- 
ing." iv. Thersander told him to lose no time ; 
and Sosthenes, going at once to the country and 
rinding Leucippe at the hut where she was to pass 
the night, covered her mouth with his hand, and 
carried her off to a lonely house. To reassure 
her, he told her his master was to be her lover, 
and asked that in her luck she should not forget 
him! She was silent. Hurrying back, Sos- 
thenes found Thersander just returning home, 
but so inflamed him by a description of Leucippe 
that he decided to go to her at once. v. They 
were on their way when they met me. Disguised 
though I was, Sosthenes recognized me; my 
guide, who saw them first, ran off without warn- 
ing; Thersander seized and began to abuse me; 
a crowd gathered ; and I was taken to prison and 
charged with adultery. Nothing of all this gave 
me much concern, for my marriage with Melitta 
had been public ; but I augured evil for Leucippe. 
vi. Thersander found her lying on the ground 
with dejected countenance, upon which grief and 
fear were plainly depicted. (Indeed, the mind 
is not invisible at all, but is mirrored in the coun- 
tenance.) When she heard the door open, she 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 85 

raised her eyes a moment, and Thersander saw 
them by a little light that burned in the cottage. 
Enamored instantly, he cried: "Why pour out 
the beauty of your eyes upon the ground? 
Rather pour it into mine." vii. Leucippe burst 
into tears, and looked all the lovelier. (Tears 
intensify the expression of the eye : if ugly, they 
render it uglier; if beautiful, then the dark iris in 
the midst of the white ring becomes like the well- 
ing breast of a fountain overflowing; under the 
moisture, the white becomes richer and the dark 
becomes empurpled, like narcissus and violet; 
and the tears smile.) Such were Leucippe's 
tears, which might well have turned into a new 
kind of amber. Thersander also wept. (A 
woman's tears naturally draw sympathetic tears 
from a man — the more, the more abundant: add 
that she is beautiful and he her lover, and her 
weeping becomes irresistible. Her beauty moves 
from her eyes to his, drawing with it a fount of 
tears : the beauty he eagerly drinks into his soul ; 
but the tears he is careful to keep in his eyes. 
He will not dry them, or even move his eyelids, 
lest the tears vanish ere she see them; for they 
bear witness to his love.) His tears, then, were 
due partly to genuine human feeling ; partly to his 
wish to make a good show. At any rate, he took 
his departure for the time, promising soon to 
dry her tears. 

viii. Meanwhile Melitta having sent for Leu- 
cippe learned that she could not be found; and, 
further, that I had been committed to prison. 
Though she knew nothing certainly, she sus- 



86 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

pected Sosthenes ; and as she was determined to 
find out what she could from Thersander, she 
thought out a plan wherein truth and subtlety 
were mingled, ix. Accordingly, when Ther- 
sander came in, bawling out that as she had set 
her paramour free, she had better go and see 
him again in prison, she answered coolly that 
there was no such thing as a paramour in the 
case: the young man was neither her husband 
nor her lover. He was of an excellent Tyrian 
family; hearing of his shipwreck she had taken 
him in out of pure pity, thinking of Thersander's 
shipwreck and of the chance that some kind 
woman might take him in. Indeed when she at 
last believed Thersander dead, she had helped 
many who had been cast away, and had buried 
many bodies recovered from the sea — all for his 
sake! Clitophon was merely the last of a large 
number of eleemosynaries. " As for my relations 
with him," she concluded, "he was deploring a 
wife whom he thought dead, — when news came 
that she had been bought by Sosthenes ; and such 
was the fact. It was for this reason that Clito- 
phon came with me to Ephesus. You may, if 
you like, verify my statements by means of Sos- 
thenes and the woman; and from the truth of 
these infer the truth of all." x. In all this, she 
pretended not to know of Leucippe's disappear- 
ance. That knowledge she was treasuring up in 
case Thersander should investigate : then the ser- 
vants who had gone out with Leucippe would 
bear witness that Melitta had done all she could 
to find and keep safe the wife of Clitophon, but 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 87 

that Leucippe had disappeared. Having acted 
her part convincingly so far, she added : " Rumor, 
to be sure, has been busy about my relations with 
Clitophon : but then, rumor had it that you were 
dead! Who can trust rumor? (Tirade: Rumor 
and Calumny — kindred evils ! Rumor is the 
daughter of Calumny, etc., etc.) It is these 
two that have been my foes, — these two that have 
stopped your ears against me." xi. Then 
she tried to kiss his hand. He was almost 
persuaded : — all seemed so plausible, so consistent 
with what Sosthenes had told him of Leucippe. 
But his jealousy was not wholly allayed; and his 
hatred of me was only exacerbated by the news 
that Leucippe was my wife. He said he should 
make all due investigations, and then went to 
bed alone. 

Sosthenes went a little way with his master 
[ante vii, ad fin.] ; then, returning, told Leucippe 
that all was going well: Thersander was madly 
in love with her, and might perhaps even marry 
her! "If so," he concluded, "you have me to 
thank ! " xii. " May the gods requite you with 
equal happiness ! " cried Leucippe. Sosthenes 
not perceiving her irony went on to praise Ther- 
sander — his birth, his wealth, his youth and per- 
sonal attractions. This was more than Leucippe 
could endure. " Beast ! " she exclaimed, " cease 
defiling my ears with talk of your Thersander. 
What's he to me? Let him be handsome for 
Melitta, rich for his country's weal, but kind and 
generous to those in need! Be he nobler-born 
than Codrus, and richer than Croesus, I care not. 



8S THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

/ will praise him when he stops insulting other 
men's wives ! " " You're jesting," said Sos- 
thenes. " Not I," answered Leucippe, " leave me 
to my ill hap, evil enough without your talk. I 
know full well I am fallen into a den of pirates." 
" You're crazy ! " exclaimed Sosthenes. " Do you 
call wealth and marriage and dainty living 
piracy ? Why, Fortune gives you a husband 
whom the gods themselves love." And he gave 
her an embroidered account of Thersander's 
escape, making it a greater marvel than that of 
Arion. " Look to it," he concluded, " that you do 
not exasperate Thersander, kind as he is ; for his 
anger once provoked will be proportional to his 
former goodwill." So much for Leucippe. 

xiv. Clinias and Satyrus, informed by Melitta 
of my imprisonment, came to see me, and wished to 
pass the night with me, but were not permitted by 
the jailer. I asked them to come again in the 
morning and bring me whatever news they could 
get of Leucippe. When I was left alone, and 
thought over Melitta's promises, my mind was 
balanced between hope and fear : the hoping part 
was afraid, and the fearing part hoped. 

xv. Next morning Sosthenes reported to his 
master; but instead of giving a true account of 
his failure, he said that Leucippe merely feared 
she should be abandoned after yielding. " She 
may be easy on that score," said Thersander, 
"my love for her is deathless. But I wonder 
whether she is that fellow's wife." At this point 
in their conversation they reached the cottage, 
and heard her soliloquizing within : xvi. " Alas, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION $9 

Clitophon, neither of us knoweth where the other 
lies confined. Were you not also insulted by 
Thersander? Often have I desired to ascertain 
these things from Sosthenes: but if I called you 
husband, I feared still further to irritate Ther- 
sander against you; if I inquired as concerning 
a stranger, that too would excite suspicion. O 
Clitophon, faithful husband of Leucippe, you 
who would not yield to another woman even 
when she lay by your side,— though I, unloving, 
believed you had yielded ! — what now shall I say 
to Thersander ? Shall I throw up my acted part, 
and reveal myself — daughter of the Byzantine 
general, wife of Clitophon the first citizen of 
Tyre, myself no Thessalian, not Lacaena, but 
robbed by pirates of my very name? He would 
scarce believe me— but if he did, I fear for you. 
My freedom of speech must not ruin him who is 
dearest to me. So be it, then ; I resume my role, 
and am once more Lacaena." xvii. At this, 
Thersander exclaimed : " Ah, that adulterer sup- 
plants me everywhere. Melitta loves him, Leu- 
cippe loves him: the rogue is a wizard. Would 
I were he ! " Sosthenes urged his master on. 
" To be sure," he said, " Leucippe loves him now, 
but she's never seen anybody else. Further- 
more, a woman loves an absent lover only till she 
finds a present one. Ply her briskly, man!" 
Thersander took courage, for his desire coincided 
with his belief and his hope, and made them 
stronger, xviii. After waiting a short time, that 
Leucippe might not suspect he had overheard her 
soliloquy, Thersander entered. He was at once 



90 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

inflamed by Leucippe, but dissembling his excite- 
ment, sat down beside her and talked incoher- 
ently of one thing and another. (So it is with a 
lover when he talks to his beloved. His mind is 
all absorbed by her, and his tongue babbles on 
unguided by reason.) While he talked he tried 
to embrace her; she resisted; and there ensued 
a struggle: Thersander at length desisting, Leu- 
cippe said: "You are acting neither like a free 
man nor like a man well-born. You imitate 
Sosthenes: like slave, like master. Spare your 
pains : you will not succeed unless you turn into 
Clitophon." xix. Thersander was torn between 
desire and rage. (Anger and desire: their 
enmity; their alliance.) xx. All his efforts 
proving vain, his love gave way to wrath: he 
smote her in the face and called her a lascivious 
slave; told her that he had overheard all about 
her love for an adulterer, that she ought to be 
glad he even spoke to her, and that if she would 
not have him for lover, she should feel his power 
as master. " I will bear all except dishonor," 
said Leucippe; and turning to Sosthenes: "You 
know how I meet attempts upon my chastity." 
Shamed by this exposure of his conduct, Sos- 
thenes advised Thersander to scourge and torture 
Leucippe. xxi. " Ay, do ! " cried Leucippe — 
"bring on your rack, your wheel, your whips, 
your fire, your iron. I stand ready — one woman 
against all your tortures — and victorious over all ! 
You who call Clitophon adulterer, but would 
yourself commit adultery — do you not fear Arte- 
mis? — you who would force a maid in the city 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 9 1 

of the maiden goddess?" "A maid forsooth!" 
sneered Thersander, " after passing through the 
hands of pirates?" "A maid I am," replied 
Leucippe, "and that despite Sosthenes. Ask 
him! He was my pirate: none of the others 
carried his insolence as far: this is the real 
pirates' den.— But come : I can only gain by the 
torture you propose. It will be said : ' She saved 
her virginity from pirates, from Chaereas, from 
Sosthenes ;— all this is naught : she saved it from 
Thersander, more lustful than all; and he who 
could not dishonor her, killed her.' On with the 
torture, then ! I am a woman, naked and alone ; 
but one weapon I possess, my free spirit, which 
neither blows shall break, nor steel cut off, nor 
fire consume." 

Book VII 

i. Thersander's mind fluctuated between grief, 
anger, and deliberation. For the present he left 
Leucippe, and after taking counsel with Sostra- 
tus, requested my jailer to poison me. The jailer 
declined, as his predecessor, who had poisoned a 
prisoner, had been put to death. Then Ther- 
sander arranged that a pretended prisoner should 
be placed in my cell, to inform me casually that 
Leucippe had been murdered, by the contrivance 
of Melitta. The purpose was twofold: if I 
should be acquitted of the charge of adultery, I 
should, first, believing Leucippe dead, make no 
further search for her, who would then be left 
wholly at Thersander's disposal ; and, second, be- 
lieving Melitta guilty of the murder of my be- 
loved, should have nothing further to do with 



92 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

her, but leave Ephesus as quickly as possible, 
ii. The fellow being brought in began to play his 
part at once. He groaned, and exclaimed upon 
his bad luck — speaking to himself, but at me, in 
order to excite my curiosity. I paid no atten- 
tion to him, but at length one of my fellow- 
prisoners asked what had brought him there, and 
began by relating his own story, iii. Then the 
decoy in return told his tale : Yesterday as I was 
going to Smyrna I fell in with a young man by 
the way, and we went on together till we came to 
an inn, where we stopped for dinner. While we 
ate, four men came in, and sitting down at a table 
near by, pretended to eat, but continually looked 
at us, making signs to one another. At length 
my companion turned pale, ate more and more 
hesitatingly, and began to tremble, — whereupon 
the four jumped up, seized us both, and bound 
us. One of them struck my companion, who 
cried out as if under torture: 'I did it — I killed 
the girl. But it was Melitta paid me for the 
job — Thersander's wife. Here's my pay — a hun- 
dred gold pieces — take them and let me go.' " At 
the names Melitta and Thersander, I started as if 
stung, and asked "What Melitta?" "Why, the 
Melitta," he answered, "a lady of rank here. 
She fell in love with a young fellow — a Tyrian 
they say — , but he already had a mistress among 
Melitta's slaves ; and Melitta out of jealousy had 
her murdered by the fellow that bad luck threw 
in my way. Well — they took me up as his ac- 
complice, — innocent as I am, but they let him 
off, all because he gave them the money." 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 93 

iv. At this story I neither groaned nor wept: 
I had neither voice nor tear ; but I shuddered ; my 
heart was loosed, and my soul almost departed. 
When I had recovered somewhat, I questioned 
him further; but he professed to know nothing 
more. — Then at last my tears came. (Just as, 
when the body has been smitten, the bruise 
does not at once appear, but reddens after a 
little ; or as, when one has been wounded by a 
boar's tooth, the wound, deep-seated, cannot at 
first even be found, but after a little a white line 
appears, precursor of the blood, which soon flows 
freely: so when the soul has been wounded by 
the dart of grief, shot by a word, the wound does 
not appear at first, and tears follow only a long 
way after. For tears are the blood of a wounded 
soul. And when grief's tooth has somewhat 
gnawed at the heart, only then do the eyes open 
the gate of tears.) v. I now broke forth in 
lamentations: "Alas, Leucippe, shall I never 
cease to weep for thee? How many deaths hast 
thou died? How often been the plaything of 
Fortune? Those other deaths indeed were For- 
tune's jests, but not this last one : that is deadly 
earnest. From those, again, I had the solace of 
saving some part of thee — thy body, whole or 
headless ; but now I have lost both thy soul and 
thy body. Two dens of thieves didst thou 
escape, only to succumb to this piracy of 
Melitta's. And to think that I, infamous and 
impious, have embraced thy murderer, and have 
given to her, ere I gave to thee, the offerings of 
Aphrodite ! " vi. At this point, Clinias came to 



94 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

see me; and I told him the story, and said I 
contemplated suicide. He tried to dissuade me : 
"Wait till you are sure that Leucippe is dead. 
You know she has a way of coming to life again. 
Wait at all events: there's always time to die." 
" What can be more certain than her death ? " I 
replied, "Besides, I will die in such a way that 
Melitta shall not escape. I will plead guilty to 
the charge of adultery, and will further confess 
that Melitta and I together contrived Leucippe's 
death ! " From this resolution Clinias vainly 
endeavored to dissuade me. — That day he and 
Satyrus changed their lodgings, in order to be no 
longer with Melitta's foster-brother. On that 
day, too, the decoy prisoner was liberated, under 
pretence of being sent before the magistrate. 

vii. Next day I was taken to court, where 
Thersander appeared with a great following, and 
no less than ten advocates. Melitta also had 
prepared a careful defense. When the advocates 
had done talking, I asked to be heard. " All this 
is naught to the purpose : " said I, " the facts are 
these. A long time ago I loved a woman of 
Byzantium named Leucippe. Believing her to 
be dead, for she had been captured by pirates in 
Egypt, I met Melitta, and we have since lived 
together. Upon our arrival here, we found 
Leucippe a slave to Sosthenes, Thersander's 
bailiff. Just how a free woman became his slave, 
or what was his complicity with the pirates, is 
for you to determine. When Melitta learned 
that I had found my first wife, she feared to lose 
my affection and plotted to kill Leucippe. I 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 95 

joined in the scheme — why should I deny the 
truth ? — as Melitta promised to put me in posses- 
sion of her property. For a hundred pieces of 
gold I hired an assassin, who, having done the 
deed, has disappeared. But Love has punished 
me: as soon as I heard that Leucippe was dead, 
I repented — for I loved and still love her. It is 
for this reason that I accuse myself, — that you 
may send me to my beloved. A murderer, and a 
lover of her I murdered, I will no longer endure 
to live." viii. My speech astonished them all. 
Thersander's lawyers already claimed a victory; 
Melitta's were thrown into confusion. Ques- 
tioned by them, she agitatedly admitted some 
things and denied others; so that they hardly 
knew what defense to adopt, ix. At this junc- 
ture Clinias asked a hearing, as this was a capital 
case : " Ephesians," he said, " be not rash to con- 
demn a man who asks death as a boon. He has 
falsely accused himself, taking upon himself the 
guilt of others." He proceeded to point out the 
inconsistency of my killing the woman I loved 
and loving the woman I killed, and of my loving 
Melitta and still implicating her in the murder of 
Leucippe. He added that I merely believed Leu- 
cippe to have been murdered ; and recounted the 
facts as to Sosthenes's attempts upon her, to- 
gether with the story of the false prisoner. He 
then suggested that this man, and Sosthenes, and 
the maids who accompanied Leucippe, be called 
as witnesses. In conclusion he urged that I be 
not condemned at least till this further testimony 
had been heard; for that my grief had put me 



96 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

out of mv mind, so that my confession was 
naught, x. Though many deemed this a reason- 
able argument, Thersander's counsel demanded 
immediate sentence upon the self-confessed mur- 
derer. Melitta produced her maids, and required 
Thersander to produce Sosthenes. But Ther- 
sander instead secretly sent Sosthenes warning 
to get out of the way. Sosthenes, who was with 
Leucippe when he received the message, was so 
scared that he at once took horse for Smyrna, 
riding off in such a hurry that he neglected to 
secure the door. xi. Thersander, in reply to 
Clinias, urged that sentence be pronounced : what 
Clinias had said was all irrelevant, or, if relevant, 
might be admitted. Certainly Sosthenes had 
bought a slave-girl; certainly the girl had been 
in Melitta's hands : that was all Sosthenes could 
testify to. " But what have this precious lot, 
this self-confessed murderer and his defender, 
done with my property — that very slave-girl ? " 
he continued, — making this point in order to sup- 
port his claim to Leucippe, when she should be 
found alive. "And as for the maids who were 
with her, you hardly expect that they will prove 
to have witnessed the murder — do you? Doubt- 
less they were separated from her at some con- 
venient place in order that these people's hirelings 
might do their work in secret. That story of 
another prisoner — who ever heard such a cock- 
and-bull story as that? And Sosthenes — where, 
I ask, is Sosthenes ? I strongly suspect that they 
have made away with him too, and that this 
man of words demands him in order to em- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 97 

barrass me. I don't know where he is, — haven't 
seen him for three days ; and his disappearance 
is very suspicious, inasmuch as he it was who 
first informed me of the adultery. Doubtless 
these people are none too fond of him! — But 
now, judgment! Not without the intervention 
of the deity has the prisoner confessed." xii. 
Thersander swore that he did not know what had 
become of Sosthenes. The judge, after advising 
with his counsellors, then pronounced sentence of 
death upon me. Melitta's portion of the case 
was to be adjourned till the testimony of the ser- 
vants could be taken; Thersander was to put in 
writing his oath as to Sosthenes ; finally, I, being 
outlawed by my condemnation, was to be ex- 
amined under torture concerning Melitta's com- 
plicity in the murder. I was soon bound, 
stripped, and hung up by cords ; some brought 
scourges, others the wheel and the fire; — when 
lo — the priest of Artemis was seen approaching : 
— the sign of a sacred embassy. During the 
period of such sacrifices all punishments were 
suspended; and I was therefore released. — The 
chief of the embassy was no other than Leu- 
cippe's father Sostratus. Artemis had appeared 
to the Byzantines and given them victory against 
the Thracians, in gratitude wherefor the victors 
had sent this offering. Moreover she had ap- 
peared to Sostratus in a dream, and had revealed 
to him that he should find his daughter, and his 
brother's son, at Ephesus. Such was the ex- 
planation of his presence. 

xiii. When Leucippe found the cottage door 
8 



98 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

left open, and no sign of Sosthenes, she took 
courage, remembering how often she had been 
saved, and determined to utilize her good For- 
tune. She at once retreated to the temple of 
Artemis, and there took sanctuary. This temple 
was open to men, to free maids, and to slaves 
whether maids or not; but a free woman not a 
maid was not permitted to enter it, and if she 
did so was put to death. (A slave might take 
refuge there to appeal to the law against her 
master: if he were adjudged to be in the right, 
he resumed the slave, first swearing to bear her 
no ill-will for her flight; if her complaint were 
well-founded, she remained in the temple as a 
servant of the goddess.) Hither Leucippe came 
at the time when Sostratus had taken the priest 
to court ; so that she narrowly missed her father, 
xiv. When I was released, a great crowd 
gathered about me; among them Sostratus, who 
having seen me in Tyre at a festival of Hercules 
some time before our flight, recognized me at 
once — the more readily as his dream had led him 
to expect to find us — and cried out : " Here is 
Clitophon — now where is Leucippe?" I cast 
down my eyes and said nothing; but the by- 
standers told him of what I had accused myself. 
At this he struck me on the head, and almost 
pulled my eyes out; for, far from resisting, I 
rather offered my countenance to his blows. 
Clinias coming forward endeavored to pacify 
him. "This man," he said, "loves Leucippe 
more dearly than you do; and it is only because 
he believes her to be dead that he has thus 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 99 

accused himself/' But Sostratus lamented, calling 
upon Artemis : " Is this the outcome of the dream 
you sent? You promised me my daughter — you 
give me her murderer ! " Again Clinias an- 
swered : " Courage, father, — Artemis never de- 
ceives. Leucippe is alive, you may be sure. See 
how wonderfully the goddess has rescued Clito- 
phon from torture ! " xv. At that moment one 
of the ministers of the temple ran up to the priest, 
saying, "A foreign maiden has just taken refuge 
in the sanctuary." I began to take hope, and 
seemed almost to live once more. " Is she not 
beautiful?" asked Clinias. "Only Artemis her- 
self surpasses her," was the answer. " Tis Leu- 
cippe ! " I cried. " 'Twas even so she named 
herself," said the minister, " and declared herself 
to be Sostratus' daughter, of Byzantium." 
Clinias broke into rapturous applause, Sostratus 
fainted for joy, and I jumped up despite my 
chains, and made for the temple as if shot from 
a catapult. My guards, thinking I was trying to 
escape, gave chase, but my feet were winged. At 
length I was stopped, and the guards coming up 
would have struck me; but I now resisted; and 
they dragged me towards the prison, xvi. Cli- 
nias and Sostratus came up again and remon- 
strated with the guards, declaring me not guilty 
of the murder for which I had been condemned, 
and protesting against my further imprisonment. 
As the guards declared that they were not allowed 
to release a condemned prisoner, the priest at 
Sostratus' request became my bail, promising to 
guard me, and to produce me in court whenever 



IOO THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

required. Freed from my chains, I ran with all 
speed to the temple, Sostratus following. But 
Rumor had outstripped us both; and already 
Leucippe knew about both Sostratus and me. 
She darted out of the temple and threw her arms 
about her father, but at the same time turned her 
eyes to me. Restrained by respect for Sostratus, 
I stood still ; but was wholly absorbed in looking 
at Leucippe ; so that we embraced with our eyes. 

Book VIII 

i. As we were about to sit down and talk 
matters over, Thersander came up, accompanied 
by witnesses, and abused the priest, both for 
liberating a prisoner under sentence and for de- 
taining Thersander's slave, a lewd woman. 
" Slave yourself and debauchee ! " I answered, 
" She is a free woman, a maiden, and worthy 
of the goddess." At that he struck me re- 
peatedly on the nose, so that the blood flowed, — 
until his fist happened to hit my teeth. My teeth 
avenged the injury done to my nose, and he 
drew back his hand with a yell. Feigning not to 
observe his hurt, I made a tragic outcry: ii. 
"What place is safe from the impious, when 
the very temples of the gods are violated? Such 
deeds are wont to be done in lonely places where 
no eye can see ; but you commit them in the very 
sight of the goddess. The temple gives asylum 
even to criminals ; but you outrage an innocent 
man. Your violence is done to Artemis herself. 
Not only in blows does it consist, but in actual 
bloodshed. What a libation ! Ionia you turn into 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION IOI 

Scythia, and at Ephesus emulate the barbarous 
Taurians, who defile their altars with blood. 
Why not draw your sword upon me ? — But what 
need? Your murderous hand will suffice." iii. 
At this an indignant crowd gathered and re- 
proached him, as did also the priest. En- 
couraged by their demonstrations, I exclaimed : 
" Men of Ephesus, behold what I suffer — a free 
man, and a citizen of no mean city — my life con- 
spired against by this man, and saved only by 
Artemis, who has shown him forth as a calum- 
niator. But now it befits me to go forth and 
wash my face, lest the holy water be defiled with 
the blood of violence." Thersander, as he was 
thrust forth, said : " Upon you, sentence has been 
passed, and execution cannot tarry long; as for 
this strumpet who would pass for a maid — the 
syrinx shall judge of her." iv. I then washed 
my face, and went to supper with the priest, who 
received us most kindly. At first we were all 
silent; I ashamed to look Sostratus in the face; 
Sostratus unwilling to look at my eyes, swollen 
by his blows ; Leucippe with her eyes cast down. 
At length, when the wine had somewhat cheered 
us, the priest requested Sostratus to tell his story. 
But he passed the privilege on to me. " Speak 
freely, son," he said, "and without embarrass- 
ment. The griefs I have suffered are to be 
attributed chiefly not to you but to the divinity. 
Moreover, the narration of griefs which one no 
longer suffers, is a pleasure." v. Accordingly I 
told the whole story, from our leaving Tyre to 
the arrival of the sacred embassy, suppressing 



102 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

only my actual intercourse with Melitta. I went 
on to praise Leucippe's fortitude in enduring 
trials even more cruel in order to preserve her 
virginity ; and I assured Sostratus that we had 
not brought our marriage to its consummation: 
if there were maidenhead in men, I was virgin 
as to Leucippe; while she was true to Artemis. 
I then deprecated the displeasure of Aphrodite — 
for that we had awaited only the presence of 
Leucippe's father to approve our nuptials — and 
invoked her favor for the future. " But what," 
I asked the priest, " is the meaning of Ther- 
sander's threat about the syrinx?" vi. (He an- 
swered by describing the pipes of Pan, and 
their construction according of the laws of har- 
mony, and by recounting the myth of Pan and 
Syrinx.) "The pipe of Pan," he continued, 
" now hangs in a cavern in the grove behind the 
temple, and, having been consecrated to Artemis, 
affords a test of virginity. She who is to under- 
go the ordeal enters the cave, and is shut in. If 
she be a clean maid, the pipes emit sweet sounds, 
the doors open of themselves, and she appears 
crowned with pine. If not, a groan is heard, the 
pipes are mute, and she is left to her fate. After 
three days the priestess enters, and finds the 
syrinx fallen to the ground ; but the woman has 
vanished. If, now, as I hope, Leucippe is a 
virgin, you may joyfully submit to the ordeal ; but 
if not — for you know what she may against her 
will have been compelled to suffer in the course 
of such perils — " vii. Here Leucippe inter- 
rupted, expressing her entire willingness to take 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION IO3 

the ordeal ; and the priest congratulated her upon 
her virtue and her fortune. To both Leucippe 
and me it seemed that Sostratus somewhat feared 
the issue; accordingly, as she embraced him on 
retiring, she assured him again, upon her oath by 
Artemis, that we had spoken the truth. Then 
we all went to bed. 

Next day the sacred embassy fulfilled its mis- 
sion; and Thersander, present at the sacrifice, 
asked that the case be set down for the morrow. 
His request was granted, viii. When the trial 
opened, Thersander said : " I cannot do justice to 
this case, so complicated is it with a variety of 
crimes. An adulterer murders other people's 
slaves ; a murderer commits adultery ; bullies and 
harlots defile the sanctuary. Where shall I be- 
gin, then ? The simplest point is this : — you have 
sentenced a man to death : — why is he not exe- 
cuted? Instead, he stands here free, and will 
dare to speak against your judgment. I demand 
that the sentence be read. ' Clitophon is to die.' 
Where is the executioner? Let him do his duty. 
Clitophon is in law already dead, and has lived 
a day too long. Now to you, Sir Priest. What 
is your excuse for liberating this prisoner? Let 
the Court step down and abdicate its jurisdiction 
to you. Come, take your seat as tyrant over us 
all, next in worship after Artemis! Indeed, 
Artemis's peculiar privilege of sanctuary — that 
asylum for the unfortunate, but not for the 
criminal — you have already usurped! You give 
it to a condemned murderer and adulterer; him 
and his shameless paramour, a runaway slave, 



104 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

you shelter under the same roof with the maiden 
goddess. You turn the temple into a brothel. 
My second charge is against Melitta for adultery, 
and here I demand that her maids be subjected 
to the torture. If she be innocent, well; if 
guilty, let her forfeit her property to me. In 
that case, too, Clitophon's guilt is proved, and 
he must suffer death for adultery. Guilty of 
both crimes, if he suffer for only one he will 
evade justice : he ought to die two deaths ; and 
though punished he will remain unpunished.— 
My third point concerns this slave of mine ; — but 
upon that I reserve what I have to say until you 
have decided respecting the other two." 

ix. The priest now replied, beginning in an 
Aristophanic vein by exposing Thersander's mode 
of life, whom he accused of all imaginab'e foulness. 
He next rebutted the charge against himself, by 
appealing to the judges' knowledge of the purity 
of his own life. Then he pleaded for me, that 
the very woman I was charged with murdering 
was at that moment alive! In the face of this, 
how could the sentence hold ? Thersander it was 
who would play the tyrant; he would have men 
imprisoned of his own motion, would try them 
and judge them in his own house: the judge had 
better resign in his favor. As for murder, Ther- 
sander had plotted double murder: he had in 
words done Leucippe to death ; and Clitophon he 
had fain done to death indeed. " But Artemis 
has saved them both," the priest concluded, 
" snatching Clitophon from Thersander, and Leu- 
cippe from Sosthenes, — whom no other than 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 105 

Thersander has put out of the way. So much 
for my defense." x. When the advocate for 
Melitta and me rose to speak, one of Thersander's 
counsel, named Sopater, took the floor first. He 
accused the priest of improper conduct with both 
Leucippe and me; averred that Thersander had 
been a man of pure life who had married a lewd 
woman; and enlarged upon the circumstances — 
publicity, etc., of Melitta's alleged adultery, xi. 
Thersander interrupted him : " Let us waste no 
more words. I challenge Leucippe and Melitta 
to the ordeal, in the following terms (and he read 
aloud) : ' If Melitta have not committed adultery 
with Clitophon during my absence, let her go into 
the sacred fountain of the Styx. If Leucippe ad- 
mit that she is not a virgin let her (die or) be my 
slave, for only to virgins or to slaves does the 
temple afford sanctuary; if she insist that she is 
a virgin, let her be shut into the cave of the 
syrinx.' " Leucippe accepted the challenge ; 
Melitta not only accepted it, but asked Ther- 
sander to what penalty he would submit if his 
charge proved groundless. " I will submit," he 
replied, "to whatever the law decrees." The 
court then appointed the following day for the 
ordeals, and adjourned. 

xii. This is the legend of the Stygian fountain : 
Rhodopis a beautiful maiden had vowed allegiance 
to Artemis, who made her a companion of the 
chase. Aphrodite heard the oath and was 
angered. At Ephesus there was a beautiful 
youth named Euthynicus, who, like Rhodopis, 
loved the chase and disdained love. One day, 



106 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Artemis absent, Aphrodite contrived to make the 
game they followed run to the same place, so 
that the two approached each other. Then she 
begged Eros to make an example of this dis- 
dainful pair. He shot the maiden just as she 
shot the deer, but his shaft was love for Euthyni- 
cus. Euthynicus he wounded with a second 
arrow. Now the pair beheld each other, and at 
first stood motionless, unwilling to turn away 
their eyes ; but soon, their wounds inflaming, 
Eros led them to a grotto, where they broke the 
oath. When Artemis upon her return saw 
Aphrodite laugh, she comprehended what had 
taken place, and she changed Rhodopis into a 
fountain in that very cave. Hence, a woman 
whose chastity is suspected is obliged to step into 
the fountain, bearing suspended from her neck 
a tablet on which is written her oath. If it be 
truly sworn, the fountain remains unmoved, 
midleg deep ; if not, it rises to her neck and over- 
flows the tablet. 

xiii. Next day, crowds gathered to witness the 
ordeal. Thersander looked at us with a con- 
temptuous smile. Leucippe was clad in the 
sacred robe of fine white linen, reaching to the 
feet and girt at the waist; her head was en- 
circled with a purple fillet; her feet were bare. 
Modestly she entered the cave; and I prayed to 
Pan — not that I doubted her virginity — but rather 
that I feared an attempt upon her by Pan him- 
self. I prayed him, therefore, to be mindful of 
his compact with Artemis, xiv. While I prayed 
there was heard a strain of music — the sweetest, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 107 

they said, that had ever issued from the cave — 
and at once the doors flew open. When Leucippe 
came forth, the multitude shouted with delight, 
and vented execrations upon Thersander. What 
were my transports, I cannot attempt to describe. 

Next everybody went to see Melitta's trial. 
She too was entirely successful, the fountain not 
rising in the slightest; and after the allotted 
time the chief judge led her forth. Thus was 
Thersander defeated in two ordeals ; and in order 
to avoid a third — (he feared he should be 
stoned!) — he made off to his own house. And 
not too soon ; for he had seen, far off, Sosthenes 
being dragged in by four young men — relatives 
of Melitta and their servants — who had been 
searching for him ; and well he knew that the 
slave would tell all when put to the torture. 
That night Thersander fled the city, and Sos- 
thenes was committed to prison. As for us, we 
were triumphantly acquitted, to everyone's ap- 
proval, xv. Next day, Sosthenes made a full 
confession to avoid the torture, and was re- 
manded for sentence, while Thersander was 
banished. 

The priest received us again, and at dinner we 
related those of our adventures which we had 
omitted before. Leucippe in particular no longer 
blushed to tell her experiences ; and I questioned 
her especially about the mystery of the pirates of 
Pharos — of the person whose head was cut off — 
this being the only incident wanting to complete 
the plot. [See V. vii.] xvi. " The pirates," she 
answered, "had lured on board a harlot, under 



IOS THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

promise that one of them would marry her. 
They made me change clothes with her ; and then, 
taking her on the deck, they cut off her head and 
threw her body into the sea. Afterward, some 
distance off, they also threw in her head. 
Whether they had taken her to sell as a slave, or 
for the purpose of this qui pro quo, I know not ; 
but if they had entertained the first plan, it was 
at Chaereas's instance that they gave it up, and 
it was this that brought about his punishment. 
For, having sacrificed her, who would have 
brought them profit, they now proposed to sell 
me instead, and merely share the proceeds with 
him. Chaereas protested, reminding them of 
their agreement, and words rose high — when one 
of the pirates came up behind and cut off his 
head. So he too went overboard! After two 
days' voyage, the pirates took me I know not 
where, and sold me to the merchant who sold me 
to Sosthenes." 

xvii. Sostratus then related the remainder of 
the story of Callisthenes and my sister Calligone. 
[See II. xviii.] First recapitulating the portion 
already told — the oracle, the sacrifice and the ab- 
duction — he continued : " Callisthenes soon dis- 
covered that the girl he had carried off was not 
my daughter; but by this time he had fallen in 
love with Calligone herself. On his knees he 
implored her pardon for his violence, revealed his 
birth and rank, averred that only love had made 
him turn pirate, offered her honorable marriage, 
and declared himself her slave. She was brought 
thus to favor him. When they reached Byzan- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 109 

tium, he assigned her an ample dowry and made 
splendid preparations for the wedding, — all the 
time treating her with scrupulous honor ; so that 
he gradually won her affection. He became 
wonderfully altered in character : grew courteous 
instead of insolent, liberal instead of extravagant, 
and so public-spirited, so respectful to his elders, 
that I recalled the case of Themistocles, and re- 
gretted that I had not granted him my daughter's 
hand. He now qualified himself, too, for mili- 
tary service, became an adept in cavalry exer- 
cise, contributed largely to the war with the 
Thracians, and at length was chosen my colleague 
in the command. Here also he distinguished 
himself, and always with modesty, xviii. When 
we were finally victorious, and had returned to 
Byzantium, it was decreed that sacred embassies 
take thank-offerings to Artemis and to Hercules ; 
so that I was sent to Ephesus and he to Tyre. 
Before setting out he told me the whole story of 
the escapade which had turned out so creditably, 
and added that he should ask the consent of 
Calligone's father at Tyre, and either marry her 
with all due regard to law, or give her back a 
maiden. I wrote to my brother, supporting 
Callisthenes's suit. Now if we win the appeal 
Thersander has instituted, I should like, after re- 
turning to Byzantium, to go to Tyre." xix. It 
was on the next day that we learned from Clinias 
of Thersander's flight from the city; whose ap- 
peal, after three days, lapsed by his default. We 
then embarked for Byzantium, where we were 
married; and a short time later, we sailed for 



110 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Tyre, which we reached two days after the 
arrival of Callisthenes and Calligone. Next day 
we assisted at their wedding, uniting our prayers 
for the happiness of both the marriages. We 
planned, after wintering at Ephesus, to return to 
Byzantium in the spring. 



CHAPTER II 

Plot, Character (Humor), Setting; Struc- 
ture, Style 

The Greek Romances, evidently, have for their 
material the staples of the world's fiction — love 
and adventure, more or less interwoven ; and it 
is upon this generic similarity in matter that 
their specific differences in treatment are thrown 
into relief. For the present purpose, which is 
rather to characterize critically the Greek Ro- 
mance than to appreciate separately the Greek 
Romances, it will suffice to draw attention to 
some of the differences without dwelling on them. 
The comparison will serve the descriptive pur- 
pose in view, and will at the same time serve to 
modify, as far as may be needful, the generaliza- 
tions put forward in the introductory sketch. 

In their plots, Heliodorus, Longus, and 
Achilles Tatius all employ, as has been observed, 
some agency other than natural causation and 
human character. Heliodorus distributes the 
extra-human action in his main plot almost 
equally between Fortune and Providence — the 
latter, perhaps, slightly predominating. The ex- 
posure of Chariclea, which, both chronologically 
and causally, begins the story, is by common con- 
sent regarded as an avowed surrender to Fortune 
(II. xxxi; IV. viii). But immediately Provi- 
dence sends the good gymnosophist to the rescue 
in 



112 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

— a rescue the providential nature of which is to 
be inferred indirectly, though clearly enough, 
from the hieratic estate of Sisimithres, and di- 
rectly from the assertion of Calasiris (II. xxiii) : 
"The Goddes have made them my children by 
chaunce" (U 63), which by its confrontation of 
" The Goddes " with " chaunce," puts the matter 
beyond doubt. It is the gods, then, that have 
controlled, through Fortune as their instrument, 
the whole of that triple chain of seeming coinci- 
dences which brought Calasiris, Theagenes, and 
Chariclea together at Delphi. An examination 
of these occurrences will show their hieratic char- 
acter. Charicles a priest of Apollo has received 
Chariclea from the priestly Sisimithres ; Chari- 
clea has become a priestess of Diana ; Theagenes 
has come to Delphi upon a religious mission, and 
first sees Chariclea at the sacrifice ; Calasiris, him- 
self a priest of Isis, has been providentially 
warned of the dangers of his further stay in 
Memphis, and has appropriately retired to 
Delphi, 1 where, now, Apollo and Diana by dreams 
and oracles expressly place him in charge of the 
hero and the heroine, bid him return with them, 
and predict for them a happy destiny. Thus 
Theagenes and Chariclea are passed from one 
priestly hand to another; even the sudden death 
of Calasiris, which throws them into the power 
of Arsace, has been foreseen, and ironically fore- 
told by the oracle ; till at the end they are saved 

1 On this hieratic element, and its special connection with 
the cult of sun- and moon-gods (Apollo, Artemis, Isis, etc.) 
and with the element of travel, see Schwartz, Fiinf Vor- 
trdge, pp. 17-19* 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION I '3 

by the appearance of the priest Charicles, and 
their restoration turns into a religious festival. 
The final emphasis is distinctly hieratic : what is 
signalized by Heliodorus is not so much the 
merely human happiness of the personages, as 
the triumph of the gymnosophists in abolishing 
human sacrifice, the fulfilment of the Delphic 
dreams and oracles, and the induction of The- 
agenes and Chariclea into the priesthood. 
Though in the whole range of the " JEthiopica " 
the events attributable to Fortune may exceed in 
number those attributable to Providence, and 
though the name of Fortune may be much oftener 
upon the lips of the actors, this hieratic control, 
with its assertion of divine guidance, must not 
be forgotten. It quite decidedly makes for that 
general elevation of tone which distinguishes 
Heliodorus. 

Bearing it in mind, we may examine the ac- 
tivity of Fortune in the " iEthiopica." Besides 
the initial exposure of Chariclea, already noticed, 
the following incidents seem fortuitous: the 
storm which drove the ship from its course and 
toward the haunt of the robbers (V. xxvii) ; the 
meetings of Calasiris with Nausicles and with 
Cnemon (II. xxi) ; the capture of Theagenes and 
Chariclea by the troops of Mithranes (V. ii) 
with its consequences — the enslavement of The- 
agenes, and the restoration of Chariclea to Cala- 
siris through the agency of Nausicles; the re- 
capture of Theagenes by the Bessene insurgents 
under Thyamis (VI. iii) and the consequent 
presence of Theagenes at Memphis; the inter- 



114 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

change of the harmless with the poisoned cup 
(VIII. vii) ; the capture of Theagenes and Chari- 
clea by the Ethiopian troops (VIII. xvii), and 
their consequent restoration to Hydaspes and 
Persina. Yet, the moment the consequences of 
many of these apparently fortuitous events are 
looked into, it is found that they too are en- 
visaged as providential, — some wholly, like the 
restoration to Ethiopia promised by the oracle; 
some partly, like the arrival of Theagenes at 
Memphis just in time for a reunion with Chari- 
clea and Calasiris. So that the chief of these 
incidents — those which are essential to the main 
plot, must be taken, at least in large part, out 
of the dominion of chance. 

In the episodes of the tale, though, that do- 
minion is unquestioned. The story of Cnemon 
gives no hint of providential guidance; allusions 
to the control of Fortune abound (I. xiii, xv; 
II. xi; VI. vii) ; and the ending — Cnemon's mar- 
riage to the daughter of Nausicles — is quite 
casual. We have nowhere heard that she or 
Cnemon gave one another the slightest attention. 
Suddenly we are told (U 161-2) " Cariclia per- 
ceived by many signes that Cnemon was in love 
with Nausicles daughter . . . and that also 
Nausicles went about ... to make a marriage " 
between them. He does in fact offer her to 
Cnemon, who accepts her. The alleged falling in 
love, the offer, and the acceptance, are all 
equally unmotived and unprepared for — merely 
"sprung." Heliodorus has no further use for 
Cnemon and Nausicles, — that is all ; and he puts 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 15 

them out of his story in as accidental and as 
summary a manner as he had put out Thermuthis 
(II. xix). Other episodes — the skill of Tyr- 
rhenus the deaf fisherman (V. xviii), The- 
agenes's service at Arsace's table (VII. xxvii), 
the siege of Syene (IX. v), the attempted as- 
sassination of Oroondates (IX. xx) — all likewise 
treat Fortune as a vera causa. 

In the speech of the personages throughout, 
" Fortune " occurs very frequently, — now as a 
mere cliche for "whatever happens," or for 
" estate in life," or for " the instability of things 
human" (e. g., II. xxi, xxiii; V. v, xiv; X. ii) ; 
now in real though conventional senses, as a 
power to complain of or abuse, to yield or not to 
yield to, and the like (I. xx; V. vi, vii; VI. xiv; 
VII. xxi ; VIII. vi; X. vii) ; or finally, as always 
in the episodes, to designate a genuine mover of 
events (VI. x; VII. xii, xv, xvii; IX. ii; X. 
xxxiv). But here too the reader is kept re- 
minded of the enveloping Providence which em- 
ploys Fortune as an instrument. When The- 
agenes, about to place himself and Chariclea 
under the protection of Calasiris, implores him: 
" Save us. . . . Save our bodies hereafter com- 
mitted to Fortune," the old priest bids them 
" hope for a luckie ende, in that this matter was 
begonne by the will and counsell of the Goddes " 
(IV. xviii ; U 116-117). In these words of com- 
fort there is an implied rebuke as well. Chari- 
cles, too, though he laments the abduction of his 
adopted daughter, acknowledges that it is more 
than a mischance: it is a punishment inflicted 



Il6 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

upon him for sacrilege (IV. xix). And the sub- 
jection of chance (Tv^rj, tcaipbs, to avro/jiaTov) 
to the more august Fate or Destiny, or "the 
Divine" (al nolpai, to elfxapixevov, 6 Saificov, to 
SatfMopiov, to Trpocopta/xevov) appears plainly in 
the comment upon Calasiris's opportune arrival 
under the walls of Memphis : though he " could 
not escape the necessitie of Destinie," yet he 
" seemed to use fortunes great favour for that hee 
came in due time to that which was determined 
before" (VII. viii ; U 182). 

The assertion generally accepted, that Fortune 
is absolute ruler of the Greek Romance, seems 
therefore subject to modification, at least, as re- 
gards Heliodorus. Incapable he certainly is of 
moving his story upon a basis of character and 
causation ; in fact he sometimes seems positively 
unwilling to do so. In the denouement, where 
Chariclea is just on the point of revealing her 
true relation with Theagenes — a perfectly natural 
disclosure which would have brought about the 
happy ending by the purely normal means of 
human motive and action — the author deliber- 
ately rejects these means in favor of a dens ex 
machina, Charicles. But though he does take his 
plot out of the control of character and causation, 
he does not abandon it to Fortune. At least its 
main events are controlled by a divine intention, 
and shadow forth, however dimly, the ways of 
the gods. Such seems to be the task that Helio- 
dorus set himself. His way, therefore, of de- 
liberately unfolding his story upon a plan of epic 
magnitude, and of interlarding it with fragments 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION H7 

from Homer and the tragedians, is not the in- 
congruity it may seem at first to be. With the 
literary instrument afforded him by his decadent 
time he has attempted great things — things far 
greater than he can achieve. At least, magnis 
excidit ausis; and, despite his failure, it is his 
high aim which saves " Theagenes and Chari- 
clea " from sinking into the baseness of " Clito- 
phon and Leucippe." 

If in Heliodorus Providence on the whole con- 
trols the main plot and Fortune the minor events, 
this apportionment of power is in large measure 
reversed by Achilles Tatius. He does, to be 
sure, give to the episodic novella of Callisthenes 
and Calligone a conventional hieratic beginning. 
But all the ceremonial richness of these sacrifices, 
omens, dreams, and oracles (II. xi-xviii) is 
lavished upon a mere episode. The main plot is 
ruled by Fortune: there the oracles and visions 
are her instruments — riddling devices to shift 
people to and fro on the earth, to put them into 
grotesque situations, or to give ex post facto 
sanction to their reckless acts. Thus Artemis is 
allowed as a matter of form to pledge the lovers 
to chastity (IV. i), and at length, after Fortune 
has played her play out, to restore them to Leu- 
cippe's father. But — why did they need to be 
restored at all? Why did they run away? 
What were they doing in that galley? 

The answer is significant in two ways, which 
are after all but one: it shows at once Achilles 
Tatius's distorted treatment of character (and 
will therefore be touched upon again when char- 



Il8 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

acter comes to be discussed), and also his utter 
dependence upon Fortune to start his story and 
keep it going. Fortune, he will have it, is to 
blame for the flight of Clitophon and Leucippe. 
This exoneration of the lovers is put not in their 
own mouth only, but in that of the parents whom 
they have presumably offended. Clitophon's 
father, we learn (V. x), was much chagrined be- 
cause Clitophon had lost Leucippe's hand, and 
"because Fortune had made him lose it by so 
little: for none of the subsequent events would 
have occurred if only the letter had been delivered 
sooner." Undoubtedly, if the letter had come in 
time, Clitophon and Leucippe would not have 
been tempted to elope ; but the fallacy consists in 
the tacit assumption that as the letter did not 
come in time, therefore it was Fortune that made 
them elope. In fact and in morals, Fortune be- 
ing what she was, they still had their choice. — 
Clitophon himself, as might have been expected, 
takes this fallacious view, and at once (V. xi) 
rails upon Fortune. But the most striking pro- 
mulgation of the fallacy is made by Leucippe's 
father. Urging Clitophon to tell his adventures, 
Sostratus assures him that he bears him no ill- 
will : " For if anything grievous has happened to 
me, it is chiefly attributable not to you but to 
Fortune" (VIII. iv). These passages are char- 
acteristic and important, dealing as they do with 
what we should call the crucial decision — the first 
moral choice — which opens the adventures of the 
hero and the heroine. The view here taken of 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION II9 

Fortune, as something to blame even for a moral 
choice, and the function here assigned to her, of 
prime mover of the plot, are confirmed through- 
out the romance of Achilles Tatius. Clitophon's 
father has intended Calligone for him, but 
al Molpai 2 have reserved for him another bride 
(I. iii) ; Fortune herself appears to him, portends 
her own cruelties in cutting him apart from his 
mistress (ibid.) and begins the action ( / nPX ero 
tov Bpd/jLaTos rj tu%??). After the abortive ren- 
dezvous the young men determine to take Leu- 
cippe if she will go; if not, to remain at home 
and commit themselves to Fortune (II. xxvi) : at 
length they embark without inquiring whither 
their ship is bound (II. xxxvi), and commit 
themselves to Fortune indeed ! So it is from be- 
ginning to end; and to recount the activity of 
Fortune in the story is to recount the story itself. 
Reference to the analysis given in Chapter I. will 
obviate such a necessity. 3 It will show both the 
frequency with which Fortune is spoken of by 
the personages, and the fortuitous character of 
events not expressly ascribed to her. 

3 As Providence, Destiny, etc., play so small a part in 
his story, Achilles Tatius has no particular use for the dis- 
tinction between r^xv and its synonyms on the one hand, 
and 6 Bat/xojv and its synonyms (al Mo?pcu, for instance) on 
the other. Only two unimportant passages (III. v and 
VIII. xix) seem to rest upon such a distinction. Else- 
where, as at V. xi and VIII. iv above cited, 6 dal/xiov = Tvxrj- 
In fact Tt>xv herself has almost become a minor goddess, 
like the Roman Fortuna ; she can be sworn by (V. xvi, xx) 
as well as at. She is, at the very least, much more a per- 
sonification than an abstraction. 

8 The analysis of " Clitophon and Leucippe " was made 
with particular attention to its use for reference, and will 
serve as an index to the original. 



120 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Two points, however, need to be more espe- 
cially noted, as effects of the absence of Provi- 
dence from Achilles Tatius's plan. When human 
activity in a critical situation has been baffled, 
then not Providence, but Fortune, takes charge. 
So of Charicles when he cannot control his horse 
(I. xii) ; so of the eloping party in the storm at 
sea (III. ii) ; so of Clinias after the waves have 
torn him from the spar (V. ix). This direct 
confrontation of Fortune with Man is even more 
interestingly exemplified when the two powers 
are regarded as co-operating : either chance helps 
a human plan already laid (II. iv, vi; III. xxii) 
or a human being sees an opportunity open, and 
takes it (I. x; IV. i; VII. xiii). 4 Both the op- 
position and the co-operation of Man and For- 
tune (due, as has been seen, to the omission of 
the third factor, Providence) anticipate the views 
so characteristic of the Renaissance, that For- 
tuna is opposed to " Virtu " — viz. the human 
element, or force of personality; but that Virtu 
can seize the Opportunity (Occasio, /caipos) from 
time to time afforded by Fortuna* 

In " Daphnis and Chloe," control is assigned 
neither to Fortune nor to the gods in general, 

4 The number of cases where Fortune helps the lovers 
seems to invalidate Koerting's generalization (" Gesch. des 
franz. Rom. im i7ten Jhdt." I. 31) that love is the motive 
force, and adventure (i. e., the activity of Fortune) the 
retarding force, of the plot ; and so renders impossible the 
temptingly simple treatment suggested thereby. 

8 Chastity, a virtue which forms part of a woman's virtb, 
is coupled with Fortune at VIII. vii, where the priest con- 
gratulates Leucippe virkp o-uxppovtivris nal rtxys. At V. xii, 
Fortune and Nature are contrasted, as at Hel. VII. xxvii. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 121 

but to Eros. Love, whether as a passion or as 
a person, dominates the plot. The story itself 
explains a series of paintings which represent 
"The fortunes of Love" (tu^t/i/ ipcoTLKrjv, Pro- 
oemium) ; and it is Eros that first disturbs the 
childish amusements of the boy and the girl (I. 
xi) and begins their sentimental adventures;— 
performing thus the function we have so far seen 
assigned to Fortune, that of giving the initial 
impulse. The Nymphs who have guarded 
Daphnis and Chloe in childhood present them 
to the winged god (I. vii) ; again (II. xxiii) the 
Nymphs tell Daphnis that Eros will take care of 
him and Chloe; and (IV. xxxiv) it is Eroswhom 
the Nymphs request to sanction Daphnis and 
Chloe's marriage. Pan and the Nymphs, then, 
to whom, jointly with Eros, the book is dedicated 
(Procemium), seem to be deputies of Eros in 
the various visions and rescues in which they 
figure (II. xxiii, xxvi-xxvii ; III. xxvii) ; while, 
for both Daphnis and Chloe, the denouement, 
resulting from the discovery of their parentage, 
is brought about by Love. In Daphnis's case, it 
is Gnatho's proposals that determine Lamon 
(IV. xviii-xix) to reveal the secret; in Chloe's 
case, it is a direct command from Eros in a 
vision (IV. xxxiv) that leads to the display of 
her tokens to the wedding-guests, and the con- 
sequent recognition of them by her father. 

This plot, controlled by Eros, Eros decrees 
shall be a pastoral plot: he receives the children 
from the nymphs, and dedicates them to the 



123 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

shepherds' life (I. vii) — an element wholly want- 
ing in the romances of Heliodorus and Achilles 
Tatius. Heliodorus makes nothing of Chariclea's 
childhood among the shepherds (Hel. II. xxxi) 
and leaves in a rudimentary state his "piscatory 
eclogue" (V. xviii), — which, however, serves 
sufficiently its purpose as an interlude, or breath- 
ing-space between the more stirring adventures. 
As for Achilles Tatius, he is a cockney absolute ; 
in him there is not the suggestion of a pastoral. 
But in "Daphnis and Chloe," Eros divides his 
honors with the rustic divinities — Pan and the 
Nymphs; and at the end, we learn that the 
young couple not only now, but during the re- 
mainder of their days, led a pastoral life (IV. 
xxxix). 

Yet it should not be overlooked that the 
pastoral of Longus is a pastoral from the point 
of view of the city. The discovery of the chil- 
dren's city origin is regarded as a happy event, 
and produces the denouement. The visit of the 
city folk, most elaborately prepared for, is ag- 
grandized by means of the apparatus of tragedy 
(borrowed by Longus only this once), which 
through a series of rumors and messengers an- 
nounces the master no less than four times (III. 
xxxi; IV. i, v, ix) — each time as coming a little 
sooner, — until at length he appears. Though the 
wedding is a rustic one, its rusticity is gently 
ridiculed 6 (IV. xxxviii, the over-nearness of the 

8 Angel Day's version is pervaded by this indulgent ridi- 
cule of rustic wits, manners, speech and dress. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 23 

goats to the wedding-guests; IV. xl, the rugged 
chorus) . Moreover the whole story has an urban 
" enveloping action " at the beginning and at the 
end, in the exposure and the restoration of the 
children. From this plan it is but a step to the 
employment of the whole pastoral as an episode 
or interlude in an urban story: — such an inter- 
lude permitting a plot that has become entangled 
with the complex evils of court or town, to 
straighten itself out under the simpler conditions 
of country life, and reach a happy end. Upon 
this sophistication in Longus we shall return 
when we come to speak of his treatment of love. 
That Fortune should have little or no power in 
" Daphnis and Chloe " 7 is a natural consequence 

'As a cliche, of course, " Fortune " occurs frequently. 
At I. ii and I. viii it simply equals " estate or condition 
in life ; at II. x it means little, if any, more than our " it 
happened " — tijxv being here as colorless as the syllable 
" hap " in our verb. More real are the attributions of 
power at III. xxxiv, where the apple is said to have been 
saved by Fortune ; and at IV. xxiv — a passage worth 
giving in full. Daphnis's father speaks : " I exposed this 
child, placing these (the sword, etc.) with him not as 
tokens by which he might be recognized, but as memorials 
with which he might be buried. But the decrees of For- 
tune were otherwise (t<x 5£ rijs rtixys &Wa ^ovXevfjcara). For 
my older son and daughter perished in one day, of the 
same disease. But thou (Daphnis) by the Providence of 
the gods wert saved " (<n> 8£ irpovoiq. Bedv iaJjdrjs). The evil 
— the death of the older children — is ascribed to Fortune ; 
the good — the saving of Daphnis — to Providence. Both, 
being outside the action of the story — (part of r& e£a> rod 
5pd.na.Tos), form no exception to the rule of Eros within it. 
Of this passage, which Amyot translates plainly, Day 
makes a hash. For the rest, it may be said, his para- 
phrase gives to Fortune much more scope than either the 
Greek, or his original Amyot, will warrant. (So at Da, pp. 
98, 99. iSi. 153, 153-4, — none of which are in Amyot or 
in the Greek.) 



124 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

of its pastoral theme as well as of the dominion 
of Eros. Just as the pastoral element is wanting 
in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, so is the ele- 
ment of travel wanting in Longus. His lovers 
remain quietly in their home fields : they do not 
" look for trouble," like the errant Theagenes and 
Chariclea and Clitophon and Leucippe, but let 
trouble come to them, if come it must. And the 
incursions of pirates and other marauders have 
for Daphnis and Chloe no consequences beyond 
temporary distress ; unlike the corresponding in- 
cidents in the other Romances, they do not put 
the lovers in any new situation or set afoot any 
fresh train of adventures. After each inter- 
ruption the pastoral goes on as peacefully as 
before ; indeed the interruptions serve an artistic 
purpose, in deepening by contrast the charm of 
the quiet life. 8 

Finally, this minimizing of the control of For- 
tune carries with it a rather remarkable result : In 
"Daphnis and Chloe" causation resumes its 
sway in a measure quite unknown to Heliodorus 
or Achilles Tatius. Longus works out carefully 
even minor incidents like the admission of 
Daphnis to Dryas's cottage (III. vi-vii) : Daphnis 
would not have been admitted if Dryas had not 
come out; Dryas would not have come out if a 
sheep-dog that had stolen a piece of meat had not 
run out with it. So of the bath of Daphnis, led 
up to by a double line of causes (I. xii-xii) ; 
which may be illustrated thus: 

■ Cf. Croiset, " Hist, de la Litt. Grecque," V. 800. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



1*5 



A wolf has been carry- 
ing off lambs. 



The shepherds dig a 
pit, and hide it with 
brushwood. 



B. 

Two of Daphnis's goats 
fight, and the victor 
pursues the van- 
quished. 

4 

Daphnis pursues the 
pursuer. 



Daphnis falls into the pit, is soiled, and must 
bathe. 



The events in the two converging lines get 
under way simultaneously but independently ; the 
train is laid; and Eros touches it off. So that 
this chain of causes is particularly notable; for 
it is the elaborate means by which Eros contrives 
to start the children upon their love-adventure. 
Daphnis's bath, it will be remembered, is what 
kindled love in Chloe. We have here, then, the 
initial impulse of the tale, given not by Fortune, 
but by Love employing natural causes. 

For one of his " retarding moments," the war 
between Mitylene and Methymne (II. xiii-xvii, 
xix), Longus employs the same device again, 
and still more elaborately. And if the larger 
scale of this event — an event not pastoral but 
political — does not in itself excuse his somewhat 
over-studied construction, let his excuse be that 
he saved Shakespeare trouble (see post, pp. 453- 
455). After all, too, the result is quite plausible. 



126 



THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 



A. 

Countryman breaks the 
old rope from which 
was hung his grape- 
crushing stone. 

i 

He steals rope from 
Methymnaeans' boat. 

i 

Methymnaeans use 
osier to moor boat. 



B. 

Methymnaeans' hunting 
makes a great noise. 

I 

Daphnis's goats, fright- 
ened from their pas- 
ture, are driven down 
to the seashore. 

i 

Finding no food there, 

they gnaw the osier 
through. 




The boat floats away. 
I 
The Methymnaeans beat Daphnis, but are them- 
selves beaten. 

1 

They incite their city to make war on Mitylene. 

Such is the part played by Fortune in the plot 
of the three chief Greek Romances. All-power- 
ful in Achilles Tatius, she is subordinated to 
Providence in Heliodorus, and in Longus, under 
the limitations of the pastoral theme, gives way 
almost wholly to the sway of Eros and of ordi- 
nary causation. In general, her control is evi- 
denced by the prominence of the element of travel 
and adventure, and is naturally at its minimum in 
the pastoral, where travel and adventure are 
wanting. — There remains for discussion the 
second principal ingredient of the plot of these 
Romances — the element of Love. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 27 

It need scarcely be said that love in the Greek 
Romances is sensual love. The whole genre is 
saved from being a tribute to "the great god- 
dess Aselgeia" not by any exalted conception 
of love itself, but by the shifting of a large 
portion of interest and emphasis away from love 
altogether. Such dignity as these love-stories 
possess is a dignity for the most part alien to 
the theme of love. What are its sources? 

A feature common to the Romances is the 
preservation of the heroine's chastity to the end 
of the story. Chariclea is of a type essentially 
celibate, is by principle and inclination opposed 
to marriage (II. xxiii ; U 73-4), and yields to her 
overmastering passion for Theagenes (III. vii, 
xix; IV. iv, v, vii, x, xi) only so far as to con- 
sent to an ultimate union with him under the 
formal auspices predicted by the oracle (II. 
xxxv). This engagement both she and The- 
agenes keep throughout their trials; — trials 
which in Chariclea's case indeed are most re- 
spectable, 9 as all her lovers — the Tyrian ship 
captain (V. xix), the pirate Trachinus (V. 
xxviii), the chivalrous bandit-chief Thyamis (I. 
xix-xxi), and even the treacherous Achaemenes 
(VIII. xxiii) offer her marriage. Her very 
beauty has about it something sacred and virginal 

9 Diogene : Savez vous combien elle (i. e., Mandane, in 
" Le Grand Cyrus") a ete enlevee de fois? Pluton: Ou 
veux tu que je Faille chercher ? Diogene : Huit fois. Minos : 
Voila une beaute qui a passe par bien de mains. Diogene: 
Cela est vrai : Mais tons ses ravisseurs etaient les scelerats 
du monde les plus vertueux. Assurement ils n'ont pas ose 
lui toucher. Pluton: J'en doute. (Boileau, "Les Heros 
de Roman," ed. Crane, p. 182.) 



128 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

(I. ii, iv) ; and, at the close of the story, her 
beauty and her chastity together are vindicated 
with eclat by the ordeal which she so triumph- 
antly undergoes (X. ix). Theagenes too resists 
both the wooing of Arsace and the tortures that 
she inflicts upon him, and of course keeps in- 
violate his oath to respect Chariclea. 

But all this, exalted and laudable though it be, 
is not so much love in our sense of the word as 
abstention from love in their sense of the word. 
In all of it there is no sign that love is anything 
but physical desire, of which the lovers are 
simply postponing the satisfaction. Their love 
at first sight is, obviously, not evolved from any 
previous acquaintance, or based upon any ripen- 
ing friendship. 10 In " Daphnis and Chloe " in- 
deed the love is quite frankly sensual, occasioned 
in the one lover by a kiss, in the other by the 
softness of Daphnis's body; in " Clitophon and 
Leucippe" there is a period of courtship to be 
sure, ending in — what? — the rendezvous. Even 
the lofty-minded Theagenes and Chariclea are 
overcome instant er by this static undeveloping 
passion of theirs. Are they really congenial? 
Are their tastes alike, or complementary, or op- 
posite? Would they laugh at the same things, 
and weep at the same things? Who knows? — 
There is not a hint of spiritual companionship 
between them; not a hint that the character of 
each is to be rounded out by that of the other; 
not a hint that theirs is to be a "marriage of 
true minds." — So much by way of caveat; for 

19 Cf. Koerting, op. cit., I, p. 30. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 29 

there is danger of mistaking the rarefied atmos- 
phere, the lofty speeches, and the grandiose 
framework of the "^thiopica" for something 
that they are not. 11 

There is no such danger in the case of Achilles 
Tatius. In the actual preservation and vindica- 
tion of her maidenhood Leucippe resembles 
Chariclea, but there the resemblance ceases. In 
fact, like Mile, de Maupin, Leucippe has re- 
tained rather a physical than a moral virginity. 
She was quite ready to yield to Clitophon before 
their flight; and it is only ex post facto that 
this wanton elopement of theirs, brought about 
by a carnal passion which they would have un- 
thinkingly satisfied, gains divine sanction from 
the interest taken in it by Artemis and Aphrodite 
(IV. i) and thenceforth becomes a trial of 
chastity. But even had Leucippe entered upon 
her adventures pure in heart, these are of such 
a gross and revolting nature, they involve so 
much physical and moral exposure, that Artemis 
herself could hardly have come through them 
untainted. The brigands and the false belly 
(III. xv ), which, with all its loathsomeness, 
Leucippe keeps on her body until nightfall (III. 
xviii) ; Charmides (IV. ix) ; Gorgias (IV. xv), 
and Leucippe's unseemly fit (IV. ix) ; Chaereas 
and his pirates, and the poor butchered harlot 
(V. vii ; VIII. xvi) ; Sosthenes and Thersander 
and their tender mercies (VI. passim) : — what a 
set! Unfortunate as Leucippe is, one can but 
feel that she is akin to those errant dames who, 

11 De Salverte (" Le Roman dans la Grece Ancienne," 
pp. 382-4) has not escaped this danger. 
10 



130 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

to their regret, become "the Helen of so many 
Parises" 12 that their pristine bloom is gone. 

Chloe, like the others, reaches the end of the 
story still a maid ; but, radically as Heliodorus 
and Achilles Tatius differ in their treatment of 
chastity, Longus differs still more radically from 
both together. For whereas they both enlist the 
reader's interest in favor of the heroine's efforts 
to preserve her maidenhood, Longus enlists the 
reader's interest in favor of his heroine's efforts 
to lose hers. At least, — we say — if, in the other 
romances, love is not spiritual but fleshly — at 
least, it is not indulged ; and what might have 
been an orgy is turned into a trial of chastity. 
But what can possibly make this romance other 
than salacious ? It may be admitted at once that 
" Daphnis and Chloe " does not wholly escape 
the charge. What almost saves it is the inno- 
cence and the inexperience of the children, 13 
together with the charm of the country, and of 
country doings, and of the procession of the sea- 
sons. But the point of the story still remains in 
the piquancy of the children's experiments, — a 
piquancy heightened by this very simplicity, this 
very naivete of theirs, and by the charm of 
their surroundings. If the fruit they are trying 
to pluck were not fruit that the reader knows to 
be generally regarded as forbidden, where — so 
we may fancy the sophist asking — where would 

u " Elle eut regret d'etre l'Helene 

D'un si grand nombre de Paris." — La Fontaine, " La 
Fiancee du Roi de Garbe." 

13 Cf. F. Jacobs, Einleitung to his translation of " D. and 
C," pp. 11-12. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 131 

be the fun in watching them? Longus with all 
his art did not, — or rather did not try! — to take 
his emphasis off the teasing succession of 
Daphnis and Chloe's attempts, and place it wholly 
or even preponderantly 14 upon their idyllic sim- 
plicity, their idyllic environment. They are 
simple enough, but we are not; and Longus 
knows it. One reader at least confesses to a 
feeling of distinct relief when Daphnis has had 
his lesson, and when Chloe is no longer in the 
uncertain care of his ignorance but in the more 
trustworthy care of his knowledge and his con- 
siderateness (III. xx). As Senor Menendez y 
Pelayo says, 15 " this is neither the true and sacred 
antiquity, nor the grace and simplicity, of the 
young world, but rather a pretty painting on a 
fan, recalling those of France in the eighteenth 
century." In a word, — though Daphnis and 
Chloe are entirely unsophisticated, Longus is 
sophisticated through and through. 

All this is but to say that the Greek Romancers 
could not jump off their shadow, and that love 
in their works is not modern love. At the same 
time it ought, not to be overlooked that love in 
the Greek Romances is a genuine attachment, 
capable of waiting, of constancy, and of sacrifice. 
Furthermore, as has often been remarked, both 
the love and the adventure are such as to take 
women out of the seclusion of the gynceceum 
and make them for a while the companions — 
sometimes even the leaders — of the men they are 

"As Raphael Collin has done in his charming illus- 
trations. 

is « Origenes de la Novela," I, Introduccion, p. x. 



133 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

to marry. So much dignity the element of love 
in the Greek Romances must be allowed to pos- 
sess ; but apart from this, the " love-interest " is 
nowhere based upon a sufficiently exalted concep- 
tion of love, or upon a sufficiently sound "psy- 
chology," or upon a sufficiently profound under- 
standing of human character, to be in itself 
ennobled. 

One apparent exception is found — of all places 
— joined to the romance of the gross-minded 
Achilles Tatius. It is not too much, I think, to 
say that the novella of Callisthenes and Calligone 
(II. xiii-xviii; VIII. xvii-xix) anticipates 
chivalry. Not only does Callisthenes offer mar- 
riage to his captive mistress, and scrupulously 
respect her honor — all without being bound by 
any oath, or actuated by a regard for the designs 
of a delaying Providence ; but he professes him- 
self her slave (AovXov ovv fie aeavTr}*; awb ravrr]^ 
rrj? rjfjbepas vofit^e — VIII. xvii) ; and, most sig- 
nificant of all, he is actually transformed in char- 
acter by love. From an insolent, evil-mannered 
profligate, he becomes a public-spirited citizen, 
an irreproachable soldier, and a pattern of cour- 
tesy. As far as I am aware, this is the first oc- 
currence in literature of the motif of transforma- 
tion of character by love. How this episode, 
so suggestive of later fiction, got into " Clito- 
phon and Leucippe," I cannot attempt to say. 
It is connected with the main plot by only the 
slenderest of threads, and the main action is in 
any case wholly unaffected by the chivalrous 
nature of Callisthenes's love. And because of its 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 133 

purely episodic character, this novella need not 
modify what has been said about the general 
nature of love in the Greek Romances. 

The episode of Cnemon, in the " iEthiopica " 
(I. ix-xvii; II. viii-ix; VI. ii, vii, viii), is much 
more in Achilles Tatius's vein. Indeed, Cne- 
mon's novella and the novella of Callisthenes and 
Calligone might well be interchanged, with a dis- 
tinct gain in unity of tone for each of the 
romances in which they occur. For while 
Achilles Tatius is hardly recognizable in the 
high-flown sentiments and chivalrous conduct of 
Callisthenes, which seem much more in character 
with Heliodorus, just as little is Heliodorus 
recognizable in the lewd stepmother, the per- 
fidious slaves and dancing-girls, the qui pro quo 
in the dark, and the general atmosphere of low 
intrigue and chicanery, that prevail in Cnemon's 
story. These are much more consonant with the 
main plot of Achilles Tatius. On the other 
hand, if we would find in Achilles Tatius an 
episode entirely in harmony with his normal atti- 
tude, we need only turn to the dubbio at the end 
of Book II, where Clinias, who has already 
signalized himself by an invective against women 
(I. viii), finds a like-minded friend to maintain 
against Clitophon the rival merit of boys. The 
debat on this subject, — a commonplace of late 
Greek literature 16 — gains particular point and 
significance here because it rests upon a Platonic 
original— viz., the distinction ("Symposium," 

19 Salverte, pp. 308-9 ; Miiller-Christ VII, 850. And cf. 
" Daphnis and Chloe," IV. xvii ; Plutarch, " Amatorius," 
passim. 



134 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

180) between earthly and heavenly beauty. Of 
this it is an impudent parody. Whereas Plato's 
distinction is between sensual and spiritual love, 
the dispute in Achilles Tatius is merely between 
two varieties of sensual love, and only seeks to 
determine which is the more voluptuous. In the 
hands of an Achilles Tatius, even Platonism 17 is 
debased to vile uses. 

The present discussion of the place of love in 
the plot of the Greek Romances may be closed 
with a note of some of their anticipations of 
the treatment of love in later literature. First 
of these is the worship of the kiss. Longus 
and Achilles Tatius, but especially the latter, are 
devotees of the kiss, and celebrate it almost as 
persistently and variously as do Marino or 
Johannes Secundus. Chloe's kiss is the prize of 
the shepherd's contest, and the proximate cause 
of Daphnis's love (I. xvii) ; Daphnis gains kisses 
at second hand by touching with his lips the pipe 
already touched by Chloe's (I. xxiv) and by 
drinking from the same place on the rim of the 
cup (III. viii). 18 The latter endearment is also 
practiced by Clitophon and Leucippe (II. ix) ; 

17 Except a passage in Longus (II. vii), "Love gives 
wings to the soul " (6 "Epws ... ras xf/vx^s avairTepol) cf. 
" Phaedrus," 246 ff), I recall little else resembling Platonic 
love-doctrine in the Greek Romances. — The place where 
Clitophon tells his story — the bank of a stream under a 
plane-tree — recalls the opening of the " Phaedrus." The 
"Phaedrus" (251, 255 G) and the " Cratylus " (420), also 
contain the theory that love flows into the soul through 
the eye (cf. post, p. 135). (The last two citations are from 
Stravoskiadis.) 

18 So in Ovid, " Art. Am." I. 575 (cited B 310 n.) ; cf. also 
Ben Jonson's " Drink to me only with thine eyes," from 
Philostratus. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 35 

the kiss is praised to the skies at II. viii and 
IV. viii; and at II. vii occurs Clitophon's cele- 
brated stratagem to gain a kiss— a stratagem imi- 
tated in Tasso's "Aminta" (I. ii) and in 
D'Urfe. 19 Even Theagenes, at the end of his 
race at Delphi, " ranne to Cariclia and of pur- 
pose fell into her lap, as though he could not stay 
him selfe : and when hee had taken the garland, I 
saw well enough that he kissed her hande. O 
happy turne, that he got the victorie, and kissed 
her too" (U 101; IV. iv). 

Like much else that " ain't so," the physics or 
physiology of love has been pretty well worked 
out, and reduced to a systematic pseudo-science, 
by the time of the Greek Romancers. Heliodorus 
and Achilles Tatius are both certain that love 
enters the heart through the eye, " for seeing that 
of all our other pores and senses, sight is capable 
of most mutations, and the hotest, it must neecles 
receive such infections as are about it, and with 
a hote spirite entertaine the changes of love." 
(U 87 ; " T. & C," III. vii ; cf . " Phaedrus " 250 
on the keenness of sight, and on the theory of 
the 6lSq)\ov). This explains love at first sight 
("T. & C," III. v; " A. T.," I. iv). In Achilles 
Tatius, the theory is not that of a "spirite" 
(irvevfjLa) as in Heliodorus, but that of an image 
or simulacrum (etBcoXov) of the beloved, as at 
"A. T.," I. ix; V. xiii. Both theories survive 
through the Middle Ages into the Renaissance. 20 

19 As to D'Urfe, Dunlop's " History of Fiction," I. 40. 

20 The " spirit "-theory, for instance, in the poets of the 
dolce stil nuovo, and in Dante; the "eidolon "-theory, in 
the concettismo resting upon " babies in the eyes " ; e. g., 
in Donne. 



136 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

The symptoms of love — "the rowlinge of his 
eies, and soudaine sighing without cause" (U 
88); "Cariclia mad almost" (Gloss, U 106); 
the blushing and paling (A. T., II. vi) ; fasting 
(" D. & C," X. vii ; " A. T.," I. v ; V. xiii) ; vigils 
(" A. T.," I. vii ; " D. & C," I. xiii ; II. vii) ; call- 
ing upon the beloved's name ("T. & C," VIII. 
vi) ; and the like, in their frequent repetition in 
almost the same terms, give evidence of having 
been conventionalized into something like a Code 
of Love. And the presence in Achilles Tatius 
of two pretty fully developed Artes Amatoriae 
(I. ix; II. iv), setting forth the lover's proper 
procedure, recalls the fact that it was upon Ovid's 
"Art of Love" that the mediaeval Code grew 
up. The ancient world had evidently accumu- 
lated a considerable body of doctrine on this sub- 
ject; and Longus in his Procemium even pro- 
fesses a didactic purpose: his book, he says, 
" will refresh the memory of him who has loved ; 
and him who has not loved, it will instruct." 

Love, then, as an element of plot, receives 
rather complex treatment from the Greek Ro- 
mancers. Upon a basis of physical attraction 
they build a most elaborate, a most ornate super- 
structure, which more or less conceals its own 
foundation. To vary the figure : If some one like 
the dreamer in the Romaunt of the Rose were 
to seek audience of this Love, he would behold 
first, crowding round their master so as quite to 
hide him, a group of his attendants, — True- 
Chastity and Doubtful-Chastity, and Long- Wait- 
ing, and Constancy, and Dame Adventure. If 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 137 

he persisted in making his way through this 
outer circle, he would next encounter Idyllic- 
Description, and Platonism-Counterfeit, and 
Na'ive Experiment, and La Belle Dame fiman- 
cipee; My Lord Episode arm-in-arm with Sir 
Chivalry-Anticipate and with the prelatical Or- 
donnance Divine; Dr. Physiologie d' Amour, 
body-physician to the winged boy; the Sire Art 
d'Aimer, Grand Chamberlain in charge of his 
court-etiquette, and Dom Intrigue, his barber and 
confessor ; and others too — all still trying to hide 
their sovereign's nakedness. But let the curious 
one penetrate to the presence. There — there is 
Love himself — there is the Prince: — a large, 
handsome, stout, rather stupid-looking youth; — 
vigorous, but somewhat languid with kisses ; and 
not caring at all whether his courtiers hide him 
or not. And is this the great God of Love? It 
must be so; there are his bow and arrows, and 
quiver and flambeau — ' But ' — the dreamer will 
exclaim — 'why, — where are his ivingsf 
Dreamer, let me tell thee : he hasn't any ! 

From the foregoing, it may be inferred, and 
rightly, that the Greek Romances give to plot — 
the mere happening of things — a place much 
more important than they give to character. 
This fact it is, indeed, which makes them ro- 
mances at all rather than novels. Not the forces 
of personality, but the outward forces, Provi- 
dence, or Fortune, keep the story alive. In a 
typical passage (ante, p. 118) it has been seen 
how the personages shift upon the shoulders of 
Fortune the responsibility for their own acts, and 



138 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

the blame for the troubles which these acts have 
caused. There is nowhere the slightest hint 21 
that the misadventures of Clitophon and Leu- 
cippe are the punishment, nay even the result, of 
their own undutifulness. Quite the contrary; 
these misadventures purport to be due to a For- 
tune that has no connection whatever with the 
character of the sufferers. If the author had 
observed any such connection, we may be sure 
he would not have spared us a sermon upon it; 
for, as we shall see, moralizing has no terrors for 
Achilles Tatius. But it lies well within the legi- 
timate field of a romancer to signalize the con- 
nection quite artistically, without preaching or 
any artificial insistence upon "poetic justice." 
In neither the one way nor the other, neither 
inartistically nor artistically, does Achilles Tatius 
offer anything on the subject. The moral con- 
nections between things — it is precisely these 
which he everywhere relaxes, or fails to observe 
at all ; character counts for as little as may be ; 
and each person is a pawn in a game played by 
non-human powers, — a bit of matter, with a con- 
sciousness incidentally attached, to be acted upon 
by outward forces. 

The result is that out of that incidental con- 
sciousness, despite the romancer's want of in- 
terest in character, certain characters do after 
all get themselves created. They are for the 
most part rather despicable, because for the most 
part engaged either in giving in to Fortune, or 
in wriggling and squirming out of the situations 

21 Dunlop to the contrary notwithstanding (I. 42). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 139 

in which Fortune has placed them. They are 
mostly of a timorous, or of a pliant deceitful 
type. Cnemon is an arrant coward: he is afraid 
of the corpse of Thisbe ("T. & C," II. v-vi), 
afraid of Thermuthis (II. xviii), afraid of the 
dark (II. xx), afraid of a crocodile (VI. i) and 
simply panic-stricken when he overhears some- 
body calling herself Thisbe (V. ii-iii). Daphnis 
is utterly incapable of courage: he resists none 
of the attacks made upon him or upon Chloe, but, 
if possible, hides till the trouble is over (II. xx) ; 
and when Lampis has carried off Chloe, goes to 
the garden and wails instead of pursuing (IV. 
xxviii). 

In the policy of wriggling, Calasiris and Chari- 
clea are adepts. Chariclea succeeds so well in 
fooling her successive suitors with promises, that 
Calasiris actually rallies her upon her skill in 
deceit (VI. ix). But he himself— partly respon- 
sible indeed for her stratagems — is an arch- 
trickster. 22 He puts off the Tyrian merchant 
with fair words (V. xx) ; he sets the pirates by 
the ears (V. xxxviii-xxx) ; instead of gaining 
Chariclea's confidence by telling her that he 
knows she is in love, he goes through the mum- 
mery of an exorcism (IV. iv) ; he sets the Del- 
phians on a false trail (IV. xix) ; wishing to 
redeem Chariclea from Nausicles, he feigns to 
get from the ashes on the altar, as if from the 
gods themselves, the amethyst ring which he 
offers (V. xiii). The last three are cases of 
wholly gratuitous deceit: apparently Calasiris 

22 On the tradition connecting this dissimulation with the 
priestly character, see Schwartz, pp. 17-19. 



140 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

would rather lie than tell the truth. So it is with 
his pupil Chariclea. On no other supposition 
can the reader account for her sly and under- 
hand conduct in the denouement. Her own 
identity has been established; she has been saved 
from the sacrifice; she is princess of Ethiopia: 
all that remains for her to do is, one would 
think, to claim Theagenes as her husband, and 
thus save him too. But she contrives " for ulti- 
mate advantage to check her frenzied feelings, 
so as to wind her way covertly to the end she 
had in view" (X. xix). What is the end that 
she can better gain by dissimulation than by 
frankness ? Why should she " by indirection find 
direction out?" Her self-contradictory lies and 
dark sayings drive her father to distraction : " She 
called him her brother that was not so. When 
she was asked who this straunger was, she an- 
sweared shee knew him not: then sought she to 
save him as her friend, whom shee knewe not: 
which when it was denied her, she besought mee 
that shee might kill him as her most enimy. 
When this could not be graunted her, because it 
was law full for none to do it, but such a one 
as had a husband, shee said that shee was mar- 
ried, and named not to whome. How can shee 
have a husband, whom the fire declared had never 
to do with her? ... I never saw any but she, 
that made the same man her frend and enimie in 
one minute of an houre, and fained to have a 
brother and husband, which never was so" (U 
275-6; X. xxii). 

The truth seems to be that Heliodorus's own 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 141 

love for rhetorical contradictions, for the bizarre 
and the paradoxical, 23 has led him to give his 
heroine this utterly false motivation. Let us not 
then blame Chariclea too severely for her final 
bit of dissimulation. But what can extenuate 
her advice to Theagenes (VII. xviii, xxi, xxv), 
at first to feign compliance with the wishes of 
Arsace, and, later, to comply with them in very 
deed ? It is tonic to hear his reply. " Be sure 
I cannot f aine any such thing : for to say and do 
unhonest thinges, are both almost alike dishonest. 
... If I must suffer any thing, as well fortune, 
as also the constant opinion of my mind, have 
inured me nowe many times to take whatever 
shall happen" (U 197; VII. xxi). But though 
he resists, to the point of suffering torture, yet he 
does at length feign this very compliance that he 
has so scorned; and he equivocates too, justify- 
ing the breach of Arsace's promise to Achae- 
menes, by the quibble that she had promised not 
" Chariclea " but " Theagenes's sister " ! — as if 
she had promised a name and not a person (VII. 
xxvi). 

So in "Daphnis and Chloe" Dorco having 
helped Daphnis and his goat out of the pit, 
the children give him the goat as a reward, " and 
meant to tell those at home, if any one inquired, 
that there had been an incursion of wolves " 
(I. xii). And again (IV. x) Astylus, to shield 
Lamon from blame for the destruction of the 
garden, promises to lay the blame on his horse. — 
Two gratuitous lies. 

88 Reinforced by his wish to delay the denouement, and 
attribute it to the arrival of Charicles. (See ante, pp. 112- 
113, 116.) 



142 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Iii Achilles Tatius, all men, and women too, 
are liars. Leucippe cunningly mixes truth with 
untruth in her reply to her mother. " My vir- 
ginity is safe ; and I haven't the ghost of a no- 
tion who was in my bedroom " (II. xxv) . Clito- 
phon and Satyrus lie gratuitously to the porter 
(II. xxvi). Satyrus has gained Leucippe's new 
maid by feigning love (II. xxxi). Menelaus, 
who might be supposed to have better taste 
than to play conjurer's tricks at the moment 
when Leucippe has come back from the grave, 
concocts an invocation of Hecate, just to scare 
Clitophon 24 (III. xviii). Menelaus promises to 
help Charmides win Leucippe, but at once bears 
the tale to Clitophon, and together they resolve to 
deceive Charmides (IV. vi). Clitophon, to avoid 
the consummation of his marriage with Melitta, 
feigns illness, swears that he wishes to comply 
but cannot, and puts her off with false promises 
(V. xxi) : "flattered her, for fancie her I could 
not." Melitta devises a stratagem to enable her 
doorkeeper to " save face " — a stratagem quite 
needless, inasmuch as she sends him out of the 
way, and we never hear of him again (VI. ii). 
Her story to her husband (VI. viii-xi), like Leu- 
cippe's reply to her mother, is most cunningly 
compounded of truth and lies, in the hope that 
the former will gain credence for the latter. — 
They are all tarred with the same brush. They 
all cringe and comply, and wriggle and twist, — 
often just for the fun of it. It is a habit they 

24 Cf. "T. & C," V. ii— iii, where Chariclea calls herself 
Thisbe, in mere silliness, just because the author wants to 
give Cnemon a fright. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 43 

have fallen into as a result of regarding them- 
selves, and of being regarded by their authors, 
in the " bony light " of playthings of chance. 

" Character," says Aristotle (Poet., VI. 17), " is 
that which reveals moral purpose, showing what 
kind of things a man chooses or avoids." — But 
what if a man choose or avoid nothing, but only 
take what comes, and exhibit his sentiments 
about it? "Speeches, therefore," Aristotle goes 
on, ('and' — we may add — 'authors' comments 
and analyses') "which do not make manifest 
such choice or avoidance, or in which the speaker 
does not choose or avoid anything, are not ex- 
pressive of character." Now in the Greek Ro- 
mances, the speeches, and the author's comments 
upon them, and analyses of the feelings that ac- 
company them, are largely of this sort: they re- 
veal no ethos. What they do is rather to ex- 
press what someone, given a situation, might ap- 
propriately say. It was a well-established exer- 
cise in school-rhetoric to frame precisely such 
speeches — "'What sort of things Niobe would 
say,' 'What Menoeceus the patriotic suicide,' 
' What Cassandra at sight of the horse,' etc." ; 25 
and we know that the taste for these hypothetical 
speeches lasted through the Middle Ages on into 
the Renaissance, where it produced and wel- 
comed such collections as " Silvayn's Orator." 

25 Saintsbury, " Hist of Crit.," I. 95- In the Greek An- 
thology, Book IX, there are thirty epigrams (Nos. 451-480) 
in this kind; e. g. (451) Ttras dv diroi \6yovs irpbs UpdKvrjv 
tt)v &5e\<t>T]v $1X0^X17 The rubric of Book IX is 'APXH 
TON EniAEIKTIKfiN 'EIIirPAMMATflN— showing that 
this sort of thing was regarded as part of the rhetoric of 
display. 



144 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

The late Greek rhetoricians called this exercise 
Ethopoieia, — inappropriately, for, as we have 
seen, it expresses not character so much as the 
emotion appropriate to a "posited" situation — 
that is, to use Aristotle's terminology again, not 
rjdos but 7ra0o?. "May the Deity grant me" 
prays the author of "Daphnis and Chloe " (Pro- 
oemium ad fin.), "May the Deity grant me, un- 
disturbed myself, to describe the emotions of 
others." The interest of the rhetoricians who 
wrote the Greek Romances is not in the ethical 
choices and avoidances of life (remember again 
Achilles Tatius's weakness in dealing with the 
crucial moment of choice) so much as in senti- 
ment or emotion, with the rhetorical express : on of 
it in set speeches, and the sophistical accounting 
for it in comment and analysis. 

Hence the long accounts of Daphnis and 
Chloe's " symptoms " — of precisely how they felt 
when they fell in love, and precisely how each 
soliloquized in rhetorical antitheses (I. xiii, xiv; 
xvii, xviii) ; and the repetition by Philetas of 
the symptoms of love (II. vii). Hence the cor- 
responding accounts of Theagenes's symptoms 
(III. v, x, xviii), of Chariclea's (III. v, vii, xix; 
IV. iii, vi, -vii, x, xi) and of Clitophon's (I. vi). 
So, at " A. T.," III. iv, we are instructed as to the 
iraOos of a lingering death by drowning; at III. 
xi and VII. iv we have a half physiological, half- 
psychological account of the iraQo? of excessive 
grief, and of why it is tearless; at VII. vii, we 
learn precisely how the tears of beauty operate 
upon a sensitive soul like Thersander's ; and at 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 45 

VI. xix and VII. i we are asked to follow that 
same " schone Seele " through its fluctuations of 
rage, grief, deliberation and desire. Twaddle ! 

Perhaps even shallower, both in morals and in 
psychology, is the rhetorical show-piece to which 
we are treated by way of an analysis of Leu- 
cippe's emotions under her mother's reproof (II. 
xxix). As if the feelings of shame, sorrow, and 
anger were necessarily occasioned by some other 
person's words, and never by the conscience it- 
self! Or — granted that another's words occa- 
sioned them — as if they never convicted one of 
his own sin, so that no amount of " back-talk " 
would cure them ! This is the view of the mere 
sophist, with whom words count for everything. 
Again, this is a mere show-piece in that the 
analysis of Leucippe's state of mind is needless — 
nothing being made of its ingredients. If for in- 
stance shame had tended to make her do one 
thing, and anger another, and we had been shown 
how her action was due to one or the other 
of these emotions, or to some composite of them 
— then the analysis might have been justified. As 
it stands, it is a piece of sentimentalizing for 
sentimentalizing's sake. 

Clitophon's apostrophe at Leucippe's coffin 
(III. xvi) and his lament over the headless body 
supposed to be hers (V. vii) are inconceivable 
except as exercises in rhetoric, — pieces of etho- 
poieia or pathopoie'm, or not even that. For 
neither is in any sense an outburst of grief. In 
both alike, the purpose seems to be, not to express 
the sorrow of a bereaved lover, but to find anti- 
11 



146 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

thetical things that may be said about the bizarre 
physical circumstances of Leucippe's death, — as 
that the sea possesses her head and Clitophon her 
trunk, or that one part of her is buried in the 
coffin and the other part in the brigands ! 26 — The 
artifice defeats its own purpose; the emotion is 
lost in a crackle of antithesis, and the reader is 
merely disgusted. 

But to leave speeches and analyses of emotion, 
and to return to character as a whole: — it will 
be useful to examine some of the personages 
and types which issue from the rhetorical con- 
ception of character just set forth, or which the 
romancer found at hand already adapted to his 
superficial treatment. A synthesis of the char- 
acter of Clitophon proves to be of special in- 
terest. His tendency to blame Fortune for his 
troubles has been observed (ante, p. 118); 
and from the garish superficiality of his grief 
(ante, p. 145) may be argued the shallowness of 
his feelings in general. This mere sentimentality 
is nowhere more evident than in the passage 
where he really does show his only bit of decent 
filial feeling. When he hears that his father is 
on the way to Alexandria (V. xi) he exclaims: 
"With what face can I look upon him, — I who 
ran away so shamefully, and who corrupted the 
charge he had received from his brother ?" 27 
Does the reader look for an act of real piety 
from this youth who so humbly acknowledges his 
former impiety? Surely this now dutiful son 

28 Cf. post, p. 220. 

27 Cf. VIII. iv, where he is ashamed to face Leucippe's 
father. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 47 

will see that he must face his father and make 
atonement ? Well, the outcome is : "I can't face 
him. I'll run away. In fact, I'll run away with 
the widow." — Here again, at this second of his 
great choices, Clitophon has " caved in," lament- 
ably. 

Clitophon possesses physical courage when no 
moral question is involved, but he is wholly un- 
supported by a good conscience. He rushes un- 
armed into the midst of the pirates who are 
carrying off Leucippe (V. vii) ; but he allows 
Thersander to beat him ad lib., not only after his 
offense with Melitta, when he has richly deserved 
his beating, but even before his offense, when his 
sense of righteousness ought to have made him 
bold despite appearances (V. xxiii). When 
Leucippe's father punches his head (VII. xiv) he 
not only does not resist, but actually offers him- 
self to his assailant. Here again the apparent 
cowardice may be explained away as due to 
reverence for Sostratus's gray hairs, and to 
Clitophon's feeling that he really has wronged 
Leucippe's father. — But what shall be said of a 
hero who is placed no less than three times in a 
position where his apparent cowardice needs to 
be explained away at all? He really is a trifle 
too abject, and, if he gets more kicks than half- 
pence, certainly invites them. The height of his 
absurdity is reached when Thersander, having 
given him a bloody nose, happens to hit Clito- 
phon's teeth and wound his own hand, so that, 
as Clitophon triumphantly narrates (VIII. i), 
" My teeth avenged the injury done to my nose." 
Risum teneatis, amici? 



148 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

What of his conduct towards Leucippe and 
towards Melitta? The abduction of Calligone 
(II. xviii), rendering impossible the marriage 
between her and Clitophon, ought, one would sup- 
pose, to open the way for him to ask Leucippe in 
marriage. Clitophon himself has thought of his 
engagement to Calligone as an obstacle to a mar- 
riage with Leucippe, and has thus by the plainest 
implication indicated that marriage was what he 
wished (I. xi). Yet no sooner is the obstacle 
removed than he at once (II. xix) caps his 
dishonorable intrigue by persuading Leucippe to 
give him the assignation in her room. Granted 
that assignation, elopement follows, naturally if 
not inevitably; for the lover would in all prob- 
ability have been discovered, and in any case 
Leucippe's mother would have plagued the life 
out of her. But — why the assignation at all? 
Clitophon, though of course he could not have 
known that the letter offering him Leucippe's 
hand was at that very moment on the way, just as 
certainly had no reason to suppose that Leu- 
cippe's hand would be refused him. However, 
we know by this time what to expect of a 
Clitophon. 

His ethos in this affair, though, is actually less 
unmotived, or less perverted in its motivation, if 
possible, than his ethos towards Melitta. As 
long as both Leucippe and Thersander are be- 
lieved to be dead, as long as Clitophon is sup- 
posed to be a widower and Melitta a widow, and 
both together lawfully husband and wife, — as 
long, that is to say, as Clitophon might, in right 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 49 

feeling and right morals, have been justified in 
yielding to Melitta — , just so long does he refuse 
to yield ; alleging arguments about the sacredness 
of his bond to the dead Leucippe, his horror of 
desecrating her tomb the sea; and the laws of 
ocean itself enjoining chastity (V. xiv-xvi). 
Then Leucippe is found, and we hear (V. xxi) 
that Clitophon feels he cannot even look at 
another woman; and then Thersander reappears 
too ; and it becomes plain, not only that Clitophon 
is a married man, but that Melitta is a married 
woman; so that now any surrender on either 
part would indeed be a double adultery. Well — 
this is precisely when he does yield (V. xxvii). 28 
And later, this perversion of all decent feeling 
and morals is made the very essence of the 
quibble whereby the guilty pair are saved: — viz. 
that they had not offended during Thersander 's 
absence (VIII. xi). 

The fact is that Achilles Tatius is simply in- 
capable of depicting, we will not say lofty, but 
reasonably well-behaved character, even in his 
hero and his heroine. He is far more at home 
among the low characters whom he gets from the 
" New " Attic and the Roman comedy, and whom 
he hands over to the fabliau, and to Renaissance 
comedy and novella: — his Satyrus and Clio, in- 
triguing servants ; his Sosthenes, a pimping slave ; 
his Thersander, a husband not only jealous, but 
violent and foolish, and therefore, as by a law of 
nature, cuckolded and fooled to the top of his 

88 Cf. Passow, in Ersch und Gruber's " Encyclopaedic," 
I, P- 304, quoted by Jacobs, " Prolegomena " to his edition 
of Achilles Tatius, pp. xiii, xvi. 



150 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

bent. It is significant of the viciousness of Ach- 
illes Tatius's method, however, that he seeks to 
give to even this great oaf a certain sentimental 
interest, by making him weep sympathetic tears 
for Leucippe, and by tracing his delicate motives 
for weeping (VI. vii). But all is vain; Ther- 
sander puts the capstone to his folly when he 
himself frames his challenge with the qualifica- 
tion "during my absence" (VIII. xi) ; and so 
he is fully stultified, e al fine rimase beffato e 
schernito. 

Critics have often remarked that in the Greek 
romances the women are superior to the men, 
both in character as persons and in characteriza- 
tion as personages. The remark is, on the whole, 
justified. Its exact value may be tested by a com- 
parison of the " best " of the heroes, Theagenes, 
with the " best " of the heroines, Chariclea, and 
by a concluding examination of the characters of 
Leucippe and Melitta. 

Theagenes possesses active courage, of a theat- 
rical, spectacular sort. He is ready to fight, and 
when he fights he wins : witness his victory over 
the pirate Pelorus (V. xxxii) and over the cham- 
pion wrestler (X. xxx-xxxii). He resists the 
torture, and continually calls upon Chariclea, and 
wishes that she may hear of his fortitude (VIII. 
vi). About to be sacrificed, he performs aston- 
ishing feats of strength and address, with a smil- 
ing countenance, — and — before numerous specta- 
tors (X. xxviii-xxx). Nor is he without moral 
fortitude (cf. ante, p. 141). Let not his willing- 
ness to commit suicide (II. iv-v) be imputed to 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 151 

him for cowardice ; it was a pagan courage. But 
evidence it certainly is of the kind of courage he 
possesses — his total lack of that fundamental 
cheerful toughness which characterizes the real 
hero. He is ready to " cave in," not, like Clito- 
phon, in moral ignominy, but in mere gloom and 
Acedia. What's the use? — he asks, when, having 
escaped the brigands, he and Chariclea see them- 
selves about to fall into the hands of Mithranes's 
troops (V. vi-vii) : "Let us yielde to fortune, 
and withstand no longer the violence which is 
ready to assault us, for what els shall we gaine, 
but fruitless travell, and banished life, and from 
time to time be scorned of the Goddes?" (U129). 
Of the pair, Chariclea is by far the tougher 
and more cheerful. That virtu of hers, so promptly 
exercised in fooling her suitors, is quite as prompt 
to encourage her lover. While he always takes 
the gloomiest view of the situation, she is always 
hopeful. In answer to his last-quoted bit of pes- 
simism, she " allowed not all that he had said. 
Mary she thought that he justly accused fortune, 
but not that it was any point of wisedome to 
yielde themselves willingly into the enimies hands. 
. . . Measuring our hope of time to come, with 
experience of that which is past, howe wee have 
bene diversely preserved at such time as is not 
credible" (U 129; V. vii). She it is who keeps 
him reminded that they are under providential 
guidance. When they have been taken by Hy- 
daspes, and Theagenes breaks his bitter jest about 
their golden chains (IX. ii), " Cariclia smiled 
. . . and brought him in remembrance of that 



152 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

which the Gods had foreshewed unto them, and 
so put him into better hope " (U 234). She is a 
good fighter withal. The pirates having fallen 
out, "she when she sawe the battaile begonne, 
shotte out of the shippe in such sort as she never 
missed one" (U 151, V. xxxii). Her leadership 
is recognized by Theagenes quite early in their 
acquaintance. Upon leaving Delphi he swears 
not merely to respect her honor, but " that he 
would doo all thinges in such sorte, as Cariclia 
would have him" (U 117; IV. xviii). Accord- 
ingly she takes the initiative in telling their story 
to Thyamis (I. xxii) ; and she soothes and ad- 
monishes Theagenes (I. xxv-xxvii), who doesn't 
in the least understand her drift or relish her 
apparent willingness to marry the robber chief. 
When they are about to be taken by the troops 
of Mithranes, " after Theagenes had saide, Let 
us do as you will, she went before and he folowed 
her, as if he had bene tied to her " (U 129 ; V. vii, 
KaOdirep ekKOfxevo^ — literally 'as if dragged!'). 
And, towards the end, despite his natural desire 
that she shall disclose her identity, it is her policy 
of concealment that prevails (IX.xxiii). Through- 
out the " iEthiopica," at least as far as concerns 
the action of the lovers, within the small scope 
left to them by Providence and Fortune, dux 
femina facti. 2Q 

No such function of leadership is assigned to 
Leucippe or to Melitta. As Leucippe is separated 

20 There are but two slips in the characterization and 
motivation of Chariclea : her calling herself Thisbe (V. iii ; 
ante, p. 142 n. 24), and her overdone underhandedness in 
the denouement (X. xix-xxii ; ante, p. 140). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 153 

so much from Clitophon, and the story is told by 
him, we see comparatively little of her, and do 
not know, for instance, how she felt or con- 
ducted herself in those crises of her career — the 
apparent disembowelment and the apparent de- 
capitation. From the fact, however, that her 
physical sufferings are far greater than his ; from 
what we see of her ability to take care of herself 
by way of cheerful lying (I. xxv, xxviii) ; and 
from her seldom wasting words in vain lamenta- 
tion ; we may well infer the truth of the assertion 
that her hopefulness and cheer was habitual 
(VIII. xiii, Odpaos /cal iXirh rj avvrjOris) . But 
Leucippe is no silent martyr of virtue; it is in 
expression that she is chiefly gifted. Her skill in 
mendacity has been noted; observe now the dif- 
ference between her letter to Clitophon (V. 
xviii), with its direct, practical and forcible ap- 
peal, and his feeble piece of antithesis by way of 
answer (V. xx) ; finally, hear her scathing invec- 
tive against Thersander and Sosthenes (VI. xii- 
xiii, xviii, xx-xxii). She fairly routs them; but 
not before that vitriolic tongue of hers has flayed 
them alive. This is one of the few really satis- 
factory scenes in Achilles Tatius. 30 

80 Even in this, there is a slip in the characterization. 
Leucippe (VI. xviii) is made to say to Thersander: "You 
will not succeed with me unless you turn into Clitophon." 
Now she had just resolved (see her soliloquy VI. xvi) not 
to mention Clitophon; and even had she made no positive 
resolve, it was most unwise to mention him, as it could 
not fail to infuriate Thersander. To let the heathen rage 
was probably the author's purpose; but that does not justify 
him in making his heroine tactless. — This letting the heathen 
rage appears to be a convention of the Green Romances. 
The character of Greeks is represented as moderate and 



154 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

But as a work of art no other character in the 
Greek Romances can compare with that of Me- 
litta. Very lofty or edifying art, certainly, this 
is not, nor by any means a " perfect " or " ideal " 
character; but very fine and accomplished art it 
just as certainly is, and a character full-rounded, 
human, and sympathetic despite its sins. Next 
to Melitta the other personages — particularly He- 
liodorus's Arsace and Demaeneta, who outwardly 
are akin to her — pale into mere types that here 
and there emerge into individuality; Melitta is 
an individual first, last, and all the time. Her 
quip about the cenotaph and the cenogam (V. 
xiv), almost the first word we hear her speak, 
marks her at once as possessed of a sense of 
humor actually sufficient to enable her to joke 
about her own troubles ; and, unlike Theagenes's 
bitter jest about his golden chains ("T. & C," 
IX. ii) it really does stir laughter. This is the 
beginning of our sympathy with Melitta, — a sym- 
pathy confirmed in the racy scene with Leucippe 
(V. xii), where Melitta begs her own rival to 
make her a philtre for Clitophon. Upon Leu- 
cippe's malicious inquiry — ' Is the gentleman your 

self-controlled, that of barbarians as subject to extremes of 
ungovernable passion — lust in women, e. g., Arsace ; rage, 
or abject cowardice, or insolent foolhardiness in men ; e. g., 
Thersander, Thermuthis, the Egyptian brigands (" A. T.," 
IV. xiv). (Cf. the Saracens in Mediaeval Romance and 
in the Italian Romantic Epic ; and Herod in the Mystery 
Plays.) Such a survival of the old Hellenic prejudice 
against outsiders remains in interesting contrast with the 
new cosmopolitanism, exemplified, e. g., in Achilles Tatius's 
selection of Tyrians as his hero and heroine, or perhaps 
still more strikingly in the winning, by a Phoenician and 
a merchant at that, of a prize in the Pythian games (" T. 
& G" IV. xvi). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION, 155 

husband ? ' — Melitta's plain-spoken answer, show- 
ing how far Clitophon falls short of justifying 
the title, at the same time reveals to Leucippe 
that Clitophon has been faithful to her. On both 
sides, here, there is broad and yet fine comic char- 
acterization. But observe Melitta, sola, when she 
picks up Leucippe's letter (V. xxiv) and grad- 
ually realizes the true state of affairs. The play 
of her feelings, the " conflicting emotions" that 
Achilles Tatius is so fond of attributing to his 
personages — these are here neither more nor less 
than the reality; for once, his analysis is entirely 
appropriate, perfectly measured, and quite free 
from superficial rhetoric. The reading of the 
letter occasions an emotional display the ade- 
quate portrayal of which would tax the powers 
o f an accomplished comic actress. Evidently, this 
woman Melitta is not a mask; evidently, there is 
some emotional depth to her. 

There is intellectual depth, too. That she 
should deceive her husband in word as well as 
deed is all a consistent portion of her character ; 
and she plays the part to perfection, — her plausi- 
ble story almost convincing Thersander himself 
(VI. xi). She withholds her knowledge of Leu- 
cippe's disappearance, treasuring it up against 
the chance that Thersander may make an inves- 
tigation. In that case, her servants, who had 
accompanied Leucippe to the country, would tes- 
tify to Melitta's zeal in caring for Clitophon's 
wife, and in searching for her after her disap- 
pearance — the plain implication being that Me- 
litta's relations with Clitophon were innocent; 



156 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

but that Leucippe had nevertheless been spirited 
away — a fact somewhat awkward for Thersander 
to explain! (VI. viii-x). The motivation here 
has been thoroughly studied out; it is complete; 
it gains our assent at once. 31 

ButMelitta is more than just the cunning wife, 
la rusee, la scaltrita, of the novella and the fab- 
liau; — she is a woman passionately in love, and 
capable of suffering. Her love for Clitophon, 
which in its beginning is innocent, and may there- 
fore at first justly claim our sympathy, keeps that 
sympathy in its guilty end — almost excused 
(though unjustified) by the brutality of Ther- 
sander. At least, we say, I will not cast the first 
stone. For this woman indeed loved much and 
suffered much : in all her pleading with Clitophon 
the accent of truth is most poignant. This pas- 
sion of hers — in both its senses — reaches its cli- 
max in her magnificent tirade to Clitophon in 
prison (V. xxv-xxvi) — a remarkable piece of 
emotional argument. Achilles Tatius's antitheses 
and climaxes, and the whole array of his rhe- 
torical figures, find here their natural and proper 
place, and become really effective. The change 
of Melitta's mood, so clearly and truthfully por- 
trayed; the impassioned eloquence and power of 
her pleadings; the real pathos of her situation; 
make the scene a masterpiece of serious, nay 
almost tragic, characterization. I f anything could 

81 For similar skill in motivation, cf. the plan of intro- 
ducing to Clitophon a pretended fellow-prisoner (VII. i). 
We may be sure that Thersander never thought this out. 
It savors of Sosthenes, with whom Thersander has just 
been conferring. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION I $7 

mitigate Clitophon's offense, it would be this 
splendid appeal from this splendid, this most real 
and humanly sinful woman. No — decidedly — 
she does not belong in the novella or in the 
fabliau, but rather in the works of Balzac or 
Flaubert. In the Greek Romances, certainly, with 
their shallow view of life, their dearth of mate- 
rials for the creation of personality, their subjec- 
tion to Fortune, and their voluntary enslavement 
to rhetoric, characterization could no further go. 
At the end of this treatment of Plot and Char- 
acter in the Greek Romances there may now be 
briefly discussed an element which partakes of 
both — the element of Humor. Wyttenbach 32 
says : " Heliodorus argumento compositioneque 
ad heroicum carmen vel tragoediam accedit. . . . 
Achilles contra manet in quotidianae vitae lege 
ac consuetudine, et propior est comoediae ; et non- 
nunquam ad hilaritatem et festivitatem remitti- 
tur." The more these Romances are studied, the 
more evident becomes the justice of this remark. 
Heliodorus is indeed, both in substance and in 
structure, idealistic, heroic, epic, tragic; Achilles 
Tatius, realistic, everyday, pedestrian, often 
comic. And it is a fact that in " Clitophon and 
Leucippe " humor counts for much more than in 
the " yEthiopica." Ancient criticism too saw very 
truly and subtly this connection between realism 
and comedy. Longinus (IX. 15) observes that 
both poetry and prose, in their decline, resolve 
themselves into the description of ?}0o?, by which 
he appears to mean not so much character as 

82 Bibl. Crit. Pt. II, pp. 57-58. Quoted by Jacobs, Pro- 
legomena to his edition of Achilles Tatius, p. xv. 



158 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

manners and customs (mores). The Odyssey, 
for example (which Longinus considers to be 
not up to the true epic standard set by the Iliad) 
— the Odyssey, in the realistic detail it gives about 
matters at the house of Odysseus, becomes as it 
were a comedy of manners. (rj airatc^r\ tov ira- 
6ov$ iv to2? neyakovs avyypacj)evai /cal 7roL7)Tal<; et? 
?7#o? etckveTai. roLavra yap ttov to, Trepl ttjv rod 
'OSuo-ceW r)6uco)<; avrw ^LoXoyovfieva olfctav, olovel 
tccoiKpSia rt? kdTiv rjOoXoyovfievrj.) 

It might, then, be assumed almost a priori that 
the epic-tragic main plot of the " ^Ethiopica " 
would offer little place for humor. The assump- 
tion is justified; such humor as Heliodorus is 
capable of, he places almost wholly in his epi- 
sodes. It centres about the figure of Cnemon, 
who not only is often rallied about his cowardice 
(ante, pp. 138— 139), but is himself, in more senses 
than one, a sad wag. He gibes at Theagenes for 
being agitated at the sight of Thisbe's corpse: 
" though you had a swoorde by your side, yet 
you, like a stoute and valiante warriour, were 
afraid of a woman, and shee deade. . . . Hereat 
they [Theagenes and Chariclea] smiled a little" 
(U 49). Again, when the young couple have 
agreed to disguise themselves as beggars, he 
shrewdly nippeth them : " That will be well (saide 
Cnemon) for ye be very evell favoured people, 
but moste Cariclia, whose eye was lately pulled 
out [in her dream, II. xvi], wherefore me think- 
eth you will not onely aske peeces of breade, but 
coverletes and caldrons. Hereat they smiled a 
litle, so that their laughter moved but their lippes 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 159 

onely" (U 58-9). — And very polite at that, we 
should say. Encountering Calasiris near Chem- 
mis, Cnemon asks the old priest who he is, and 
Calasiris returns the question ; whereupon, " That 
were a mery jeste in deede, saide Cnemon." 
These specimens of the young man's humor will 
probably suffice; if not, others may be found at 
U 65, 79-80, 156. The conversation of Calasiris 
with the deaf fisherman Tyrrhenus (V. xviii; 
U 137-8; cf. post p. 196-197 n. 64) — also an epi- 
sode — affords a gleam of humor in the deaf 
man's answers at loggerheads. There is still an- 
other humorous episode — the meeting of Calasi- 
ris, Nausicles and Cnemon with an anonymous 
youth whom Heliodorus creates merely to tell 
them news. Incidentally this " messenger " 
appears to be in love with a girl named Isias, 
who is leading him a merry dance to satisfy her 
caprices. Nausicles indulges in a bit of pleasan- 
try at the lover's expense ; who hastens off to his 
mistress, and the incident is closed (VI. iii, iv; 
cf. post p. 196-197 n. 64). From the main plot 
I recall but three humorous passages, likewise of 
a very mild order. Calasiris and Chariclea dis- 
guised as beggars jest at their own appearance 
(VI. xi, xii) ; Calasiris rallies Chariclea upon 
her expertness in inventing schemes to put off 
her suitors (VI. ix; cf. ante, p. 139) ; Theagenes 
jokes ironically about the golden fetters placed 
upon him and Chariclea by the Ethiopians (IX. 
ii; U 234, quoted post, p. 214, q. v.). On the 
whole, humor is not Heliodorus's strong point. 33 

"There is a bit of unintentional fun in Underdowne's 
version of one of Chariclea's laments: "But O Theagenes, 



l6o THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

The realistic hnmor of Achilles Tatius has 
already been observed at its best in the scenes of 
high comedy that centre about Melitta (ante, pp. 
154-155). Hardly below these is the passage at 
V. xx, where Clitophon protests that he is not 
really Melitta's husband, and Satyrus answers 
' Tush, man, you sleep with her ! ' — the sort of 
answer that is all-conclusive in Comedy, and can 
be warranted to bring down the house. Repeated 
once or twice, it would become a true Moliere- 
esque catchword, like " Mais que diable allait-il 
faire dans cette galere?" or "Sans dot!" In 
fact, the whole scene is richly humorous, from 
the moment when Satyrus declares that he has 
mollified Leucippe by telling her that Clitophon 
has married Melitta against his will — absent- 
mindedly as it were — to the composition of Clito- 
phon's silly answer to Leucippe's letter. Very 
funny too is the solemn beginning of the supper- 
party in the temple (VIII. iv) : Clitophon with a 
black eye and a bloody nose is ashamed to meet 
the eye of Sostratus across the table ; while Sos- 
tratus, having given Clitophon that same black eye, 
is too much embarrassed to look at him. The 
horseplay implied here is more prominent in the 
broadly comic genre-picture of " The Husband's 
Return" (V. xxiii). Clitophon and Melitta be- 
ing at dinner, in comes Thersander, and boxes 
and buffets the young gentleman about 34 — who 

... if thou be dead ... it is time I offer these funeralls 
to thee (and herewithall she pulled off her haire, and laid 
it on her bed)" (U 163; VI. viii). 

84 On this, and the other scene of fustigation in the tem- 
ple (VIII. i) cf. ante, p. 147. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION l6l 

meanwhile philosophizes! (Quaere, whether this 
be not a burlesque of those same domestic scenes 
in the Odyssey which displease Longinus?) 
Achilles Tatius's fondness for low intrigue pro- 
duces several genre pictures of the same Flemish 
or Hogarthian realism. Leucippe's mother 
" takes on like anything " ; faints ; recovers ; boxes 
Clio's ears ; scolds Leucippe ; Leucippe trumps up 
a story; and her mother again "takes on" (II. 
xxiv-xxv). The talk is like a popular Italian 
ballad-dialogue between a strict mother and a gay 
daughter, or like that of the peasants in some of 
Fortini's novelle. Again (II. xx-xxii), two in- 
triguing slaves swap fables, of which the second 
has much of the spirit of Uncle Remus. Or Cli- 
tophon and Satyrus go by night to Clinias's lodg- 
ing and try to rouse him ; while they are under 
his window clamoring in the dark street, they are 
joined by Clio the slave-girl (II. xxvi) :— a vivid 
bit of genre. Even more masterly is the pica- 
resque scene at the inn, as described by the decoy- 
prisoner (VII. iii). Either of these last might 
figure creditably in " Roderick Random" or " Gil 
Bias." The antics of Clitophon in love (I. vi), 
the further talk between Leucippe and her mother 
(II.xxviii),Thersander's precipitate retreat, "to 
avoid a third ordeal" (VIII. xiv), are all dis- 
tinctly amusing ; but the modern reader will hardly 
force a smile at Menelaus's mummery ^ (III. 
xviii), or at Leucippe's unseemly kicking in the 
convulsions with which her derangement began 
(IV. ix), or at the priest's " Aristophanic " in- 
vective against Thersander (VIII. ix). Nor will 

12 



l62 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

he find to his taste the misogynistic passages, 
which undoubtedly amused the Greek and prob- 
ably amused the Renaissance reader : — the cynical 
view of Sosthenes (VI. xvii) ; Menelaus's argu- 
ments and propensities (II. xxxv-xxxviii) ; Clin- 
ias's invective against women and marriage (I. 
viii). It is of interest, however, to find such con- 
siderable portions of the argument de conjuge 
non ducenda worked out at this early date. Satire 
against women, apparently a convention of Greek 
as of mediaeval literature, finds a place not only 
in Euripides and in Lucian, but in Achilles Tatius 
as well. 

Longus oilers few specifically humorous pas- 
sages like the vintage-scene, where Daphnis and 
Chloe are each jealous of the attentions paid to 
the other (II. ii), or the wedding ( IV. xxxviii-xl) 
where the smell of the goats and the rudeness 
of the rustic chorus are gently laughed at. His 
humor is rather pervasive, inhering as it does in 
the incongruity between the children's innocence 
and. the piquancy of their experiments. Unlike 
the humor of Heliodorus, which is verbal, re- 
siding in comment or gibe, it is more like that of 
Achilles Tatius, a part of the situation itself, 
inherent in the relations of the persons to each 
other as the plot evolves. 

So much for the humor of the Greek Ro- 
mances. We turn to a study of their Setting — 
their background in time (historical) and in space 
(geographical), and their general mise en scene 
of descriptive circumstance. 

Among the Greek Romances known to the 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 63 

Renaissance none possesses an historical back- 
ground that is at all definite, accurate or consis- 
tent, or that vitally affects the course of the tale. 35 
The events of the "yEthiopica " are supposed to 
occur while Egypt is still a satrapy of Persia — 
i. e., before the conquests of Alexander — and at 
a time when the Satrap is at war with the half- 
legendary King of Ethiopia. Within these shad- 
owy limits there occur plenty of anachronisms 
and historical inconsistencies (Rohde 452-455), 
but nothing to date the story. Of " Clitophon 
and Leucippe " all we know is that its events take 
place after the time of Alexander, or at least 
after the foundation of Alexandria and the build- 
ing of the Pharos, and before the final destruc- 
tion of the temple of Diana at Ephesus. Here 
again a supposed war between Thrace and Byzan- 
tium pushes its way into the plot, and takes Leu- 
cippe to Tyre. But that is all. As for Daphnis 
and Chloe, for all we know, they may have loved 
any time this side the Golden Age. 

The geographical setting, despite specific names, 
is hardly less vague than the historical. On 
Lesbos there are undoubtedly hills and streams, 
shores, caves and harbors such as those described 
by Longus ; — but so there are elsewhere. Helio- 
dorus, whose detailed accounts of matters Egyp- 

36 The Ninus-fragment (discovered 1893) and the romance 
of Chariton (" Chaereas and Callirhoe," first published 1750) 
may be properly termed historical fiction, the first because 
of its historical hero and heroine (Ninus and Semiramis) 
and its prominent and (comparatively) consistent histor- 
ical setting; the second because of its historical personages 
(Artaxerxes, etc.). Both may be dated before 200 A.D. 
As both were unknown to the Renaissance, they will re- 
ceive no further notice here. 



164 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

tian have been supposed to prove personal ac- 
quaintance with Egypt, has been shown to be 
inaccurate. (Naber, in Mnemosyne, N. S., I. 

(^73) > P- x 4 6 ff-> cited b y Rohde, 456, n. I.) 
What matter? The face of the earth, built of 
spaces that hold its regions apart, and diversified 
by cities, islands, winds, waves and strange in- 
habitants, is for Heliodorus, as well as for Achilles 
Tatius, just the board on which the powers play 
their game, — no more. Any space whatever will 
do to separate two lovers, any storm to throw out 
of its course the ship that bears them, any city to 
receive them. What happens may have happened 
almost anywhere. 36 

In the absence of real local color, both Helio- 
dorus and Achilles Tatius employ geographical 
setting largely as a source of instruction and en- 
tertainment, by way of the remarkable misinfor- 
mation and of the numerous descriptions it plaus- 
ibly affords. A glance at some of the glosses in 
Underdowne's version of the "iEthiopica " will 
suggest the prominence of this instructive matter. 
"A pretty discourse of Achilles countrie with 
the arguments that the Aenians have to prove 
that they are of Achilles bloud" (75). "The 
Calidonian sea, is very troublesome" (136) ; and 
Calasiris at great length explains why. Comply- 
ing with the request of his new acquaintances at 

86 The geographical background, like the historical, ap- 
pears, in the Romances we are here concerned with, to 
have declined from an earlier state of much greater impor- 
tance. " The Marvels Beyond Thule " of Antonius Diogenes 
is the very type of Reiseroman. In the " Babylonica " of 
Iamblichus, the local color, Oriental at least in intention, is 
sometimes essential to the story (Rohde, 378-9). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 65 

Delphi, he gives various information about Egypt 
— its religions, the construction of its tombs and 
pyramids, the source of the Nile, and the causes 
of the flood (68-9). "Wherefore soever yron 
serveth in other countries, gold serveth in Ethi- 
opia" (234). "Howe the Persian horsman is 
armed." . . . " How a Steele coat is made" (245). 
" How the Trogloditae weare their arrowes " viz. 
radiating from their turbans ; . . . " Whereof the 
Trogloditae make their arrowes " : viz. " from a 
bone out of the dragons backe . . . they sharpen 
the same, and make a naturall head thereof" 
(248). " Nylus, Asasoba, and Astabora, flouds 
of Ethiopia beside Meroe " (261 ) . " The length 
and breadth of the Hand wherein Meroe is " . . . 
"Wheate and other fruite of ^Ethiopia." . . . 
" The reedes of /Ethiopia are great belike " (262) 
— this last a cautious observation to temper the 
account of Hydaspes' bamboo pavilion, which 
was "made of foure reedes . . . so that at everie 
corner stoode a reede to stay it up insteede of a 
pillar " : — rather too tall a story to be swallowed 
without a gloss. That the Blemmyes stabbed the 
Persian horses in the belly, and then having thus 
brought down both horse and rider, proceeded to 
hamstring the latter, is advertised as " A notable 
fact of the Blemmies " (247). Hydaspes' recep- 
tion of ambassadors and gifts from various peo- 
ples offers an unusual opportunity for the intro- 
duction of "notable facts" (278-9); and his 
sojourn at Syene enables its people to show him 
a Nilometer, and sundials which at the solstice 
cast no shadow — Syene being on the tropic — and 



1 66 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

to discuss again the course of the Nile, its pecu- 
liar plants and animals, and its functions of fer- 
tilizing, of making alluvial land, and of serving 
as a calendar (250-251). 

Achilles Tatius likewise loses no opportunity 
to tell of strange lands and strange beasts : — the 
Hippopotamus (IV. ii-iii) ; the Elephant and his 
sweet breath (IV. iv-v) ; the Phoenix and his 
pious son (III. xxv) ; the Crocodile, whose teeth 
extend back almost to his belly (IV. xix) ; a 
Sicilian spring, where fire and water mingle; a 
musical river in Spain, played upon by the wind ; 
a Libyan lake from which gold is fished up by 
means of poles smeared with pitch (II. xiv). 
Indeed, so far from losing an existent oppor- 
tunity, he creates opportunities where they do not 
exist. Not one of the passages just cited has the 
slightest relevancy. 

Longus is saved from such geographical digres- 
sions, just as he is saved from the domination of 
Fortune — by staying at home. And in describ- 
ing that home, he exhibits, far more than either 
Heliodorus or Achilles Tatius, a true artist's ap- 
preciation of the intrinsic beauty of his setting. 
The thicket and the grotto where Daphnis and 
Chloe respectively were found (I. ii, iv) ; the 
sights, sounds, and occupations of summer (I. 
xxiii), of winter (III. iii-iv), and of spring (III. 
xii-xiii) ; the garden of Philetas (II. iii) and the 
garden of Lamon (IV. ii-iii) — the latter with its 
distant view of meadows and grazing sheep and 
cattle, and of the sea with ships sailing by; the 
vintage (II. i-ii) and the gathering of the fruit 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 67 

(III. xxx-xxxiv) ; — these are some of the fea- 
tures, truly imagined, of that old rustic world in 
which Longus's boy and girl shepherded their 
flocks. Certainly, as has been said, neither this 
landscape nor this country life is peculiar to 
Lesbos ; but whether in Lesbos or in Sicily, " in 
Tempe or the dales of Arcady," it breathes the 
same Theocritean charm — a charm with which 
there is nothing at all comparable in either of the 
other Romances. Still, when Heliodorus and 
Achilles Tatius consent to forego their puerile 
delight in " hearing or telling some new thing," 
and soberly endeavor to make a real background 
for real events, they are not without success. 
Heliodorus's account of " The habitation and 
place, where the thieves of Egypt aboade, . . . 
with their common wealth, and trade of life" 
(U 14) ; the corresponding and partly imitative 
passage in " Clitophon and Leucippe " describing 
the Nile and its floods and the buccaneers' islands 
(IV. xi, xii) ; Heliodorus's grandiose account of 
the ceremonies at Delphi (III. i-v) ; Achilles 
Tatius's lively description of the gay traffic on 
the Nile (IV. xviii) and of the city of Alexan- 
dria (V. i-ii) ; do succeed in imparting to the 
reader some sense that the action of the story is 
taking place in this world. But such passages 
are rare. For the most part, the geographical 
setting of these two Romances is made to serve 
the sophist's turn for pseudo-science and improv- 
ing misinformation, for marvel and paradox, and 
for set description. 
An excess of description, in particular, is one 



1 68 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

of the most striking faults of the whole genre. 
Here again, Longus offends least, kept safe by 
that artistic feeling which among these rhetori- 
cians fell to his share alone. Yet even he over- 
describes; — inserting, for example, into his de- 
scription of the garden of Lamon an irrelevant 
list of the paintings or sculptures in the temple 
of Bacchus that stood there. We may well, how- 
ever, be "astonished at his moderation" when 
we remember that the whole of " Daphnis and 
Chloe" — the very story — purports to be an ex- 
planation of a series of pictures. 37 Pictures he 
does give us, in plenty, not confining these to 
background, either (ante, pp. 166-167), but en- 
visaging the incidents themselves pictorially: 
Chloe girdled with a fawn-skin and crowned with 
pine meets Daphnis and offers him a drink of 
milk (I. xxxiv) ; Daphnis swims ashore sup- 
ported on the horns of two cows (I. xxx) ; 
Daphnis as the strangers from town first behold 
him (IV. xiv) or as Gnatho describes him (IV. 
xvii) ; and many others. Nor does he confine his 
art to visual impressions alone; he gives a wide 
range of lovely sensuous images — the sounds and 
motions and odors of his idyllic world, as well as 
its sights. There is the sailors' song and chorus 
and its echo, coming broken and diversified by the 
varying conformation of land and water (III. 
xxi) ; Philetas's piping (II. xxxv) ; Dryas's pan- 
tomimic dance of the vintage (II. xxxvi) and 

87 This conception of the story as a succession of Idylls 
(elStiWia — little pictures) is accepted by M. Raphael Collin, 
who has re-translated " Daphnis and Chloe " into the lan- 
guage of pictorial art. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 69 

Daphnis and Chloe's dramatic dance of Pan and 
Syrinx (II. xxxvii) ; the piping of Daphnis and 
Chloe, the nightingale's responsive song, and the 
bleating of the flocks — a chorus of springtime 
(III. xii-xiii) ; and the rich autumnal garner of 
pears and apples, with all the color and fragrance 
of the fruit — especially that golden apple for 
which Daphnis climbed to the topmost bough 
(III. xxxiii-xxxiv). But with all this abund- 
ance of pictures and golden profusion of sensu- 
ous imagery, Longus has spared us the tedious 
descriptions which his Proem may well have led 
us to expect. He stops well within the bounds 
of that older Greek moderation which the other 
Romancers seem to have unlearned. His pas- 
toral theme and his sense of measure, together 
with his instinct for beauty, keep him from ex- 
cess, and, despite his elaborate style, let him rest 
in an effect of simplicity. This richness in sim- 
plicity is what constitutes his peculiar charm. 

In Achilles Tatius the excess of description, 
like the excess of " psychologizing " (ante, p. 
145), is a trick of the rhetorician's trade. The 
descriptive show-pieces of which he is so fond 
were, like the rjOoiroieiat, a regular exercise of 
the schools, known as e/cQpao-is, "a set descrip- 
tion intended to bring a person, place, picture, 
etc., vividly before the mind's eye. It is found 
largely in the Epideictic rhetoricians, and still 
more largely in the Greek Romances." 38 These 
ifc<f)pd(Tei<;, many of which have come down to us 

38 Saintsbury, " Hist, of Grit.," Vol. I, Index. " Epideic- 
tic — the third kind of oratory — the rhetoric of display " 
(ibid.). 



170 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

in the works of Theocritus, Moschus, Ovid, 
Aelian, Lucian, Callistratus, Philostratus and 
others, differ fundamentally both in purpose and 
in method from the descriptions in Greek class- 
ical poetry. Classical descriptions — the Shield of 
Achilles (II. XVIII. fin.), the Palace and the 
Garden of Alcinous (Od. VII), the sleeping 
eagle of Zeus, and Mount Aetna in eruption 
(Pindar, Pyth., I) — are made "with the eye on 
the object," and with the purpose of giving 
material or background for action, or brilliant 
illumination to a stage in the lyrical evolution of 
an idea. The sophistical descriptions of Hellen- 
istic and post-Hellenistic times, the i/ccfypdo-eis , 
are made for their own sake, for display; and 
with the eye on a picture™ of the object. It has 
often been pointed out that Alexandrian poetry, 
and post-Alexandrian poetry both Greek and 
Roman, found subjects and models largely in 
Alexandrian painting. 40 This habit of pictorial 
description, of conceiving a literary theme pic- 
torially, produces about the same literary result 
whether in any given case the picture described 

89 " It is indeed, usual among the Latin poets (who had 
more art and reflection than the Grecian) to take hold of 
all opportunities to describe the picture of any place or 
action, which they generally do better than they could the 
place or action itself." 

Addison's " Notes " on his translations from Ovid. Works, 
ed. Tickell, 1804, Vol. VI, pp. 177-8. 

"Mahaffy, " Greek Life and Thought," pp. 117 ff, 218 ff, 
414 ff; Ste. Beuve, " fetude sur Virgile," p. 278; A. Lang, 
" Theocritus and his Age " (Introduction to his Transla- 
tion of Theocritus, Bion and Moschus), pp. xxxvii ff; T. 
R. Glover, " Studies in Virgil," pp. 53-4 ; (who cites) Bois- 
sier, " Promenades Archeologiques : — Rome et Pompei," pp. 
342-387. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 171 

by the rhetorician be an existing painting or only 
an imaginary painting visualized, — a scene re- 
composed in pictorial terms. 41 Thus, in describ- 
ing the "real" garden of Clitophon's house (I. 
xv), Achilles Tatius largely repeats the same 
details — crystal fountain, cloistered wall, foliage 
closely interwoven, with interstices through 
which the sunlight filters upon the ground in 
flickering spots of light and shade — the same 
details that he has used to describe the meadow 
in the painting which opens his story (I. i). The 
pictorial habit of mind reinforces, and is rein- 
forced by, the desire for rhetorical display. 

The abduction of Europa, in particular, — the 
painting of which has just been mentioned — was 
one of the stock possessions alike of painter, 

41 So that, e. g., the question whether the picture-gallery 
which Philostratus's Eikovcs (Imagines) profess to describe 
was genuine or not, concerns not so much the student of 
literature as the student of painting. In fact, these and 
similar literary descriptions are well known to have been 
taken, in their turn, as models for illustration by the paint- 
ers of the Renaissance. See Ch. Bigot, " Raphael and the 
Villa Farnesina," pp. 69 ff ; Franz Wickhoff, " Veneziani- 
sche Bilder," in Jahrb. d. Kgl. preussischen Kuntsversamm- 
lungen, Vol. 23, pp. 11 8-1 23 ; Richard Forster, " Philostrat's 
Gemalde in der Renaissance," ibid., Vol. 25, pp. 15-48; 
" Lucian in der Renaissance" (Kiel, 1886). For the his- 
tory of Greek painting, the literary documents, including 
numerous iK<f>pdcreis } are collected in Overbeck, " Die an- 
tiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Kiinste 
bei den Griechen " (Leipzig, 1868). As far as I am aware, 
there is no comprehensive work on the history of the rela- 
tions between literature and the graphic arts — a most fas- 
cinating subject. An important chapter is contributed to 
the history of the criticism of these relations, by Professor 
W. G. Howard, in the Publications of the Mod. Lang. Ass'n 
of America, Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (March, 1909), pp. 40-123, 
under the title " Ut Pictura Poesis." 



172 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

sculptor, engraver, poet and rhetorician. It 
figured largely in statues, in vase-painting, and 
in the wall-painting of Alexandria and the cities 
of southern Italy; 42 it was carved upon gems; 43 
and, before Achilles Tatius, it had received 
literary handling in Moschus (Idyll II.) , Horace 
(Od. III. 27), Ovid (Met. II. 836-875 ; 44 Fasti 
V. 605 fT. ; Amores I. iii, 23 ff.), Lucian (Dialogi 
Marini, XV.), Anacreon (Teubner, No. 54) and 
Nonnus (Dionysiaca, I. 46 fL), and had been 
travestied in the Batrachomyomachia (65-81). 45 
Everywhere the treatment revolves in a closed 
round of images: Europa and her companions 

42 Helbig, " Untersuchungen," pp. 224 ff ; " Campanische 
Wandgemalde," Nos. 122-130. Otto Jahn, " Die Entfiihr- 
ung der Europa auf antiken Kunstwerken," in Wiener 
Akademie, hist-phil. Classe, Denkschriften, v. 19 (whole 
volume) ; " Uber ein Marmorrelief der Glyptothek in Miin- 
chen," in Berichte der sdchsischen Gesellschaft der Wissen- 
schaften, Philol-Hist. Classe, Vol. 6 (1854), pp. 160-194 
(esp. pp. 185-6). 

43 Furtwangler, " Die Antiken Gemmen," PL VI, 63, 
XXXVII, s, etc. Reinach, " Pierres Gravees," PI. 28, 29, 
76, 79. "La Galerie de Florence" (Paris, 1819; no pag- 
ing, or numbering of plates), Vols. I and IV. 

44 A propos of which, Addison makes the remark quoted 
ante, p. 170 n. 1, and in the same connection praises Achilles 
Tatius's Europa as surpassing Ovid's. 

45 From the Renaissance on, its popularity is undimin- 
ished. Colonna, " Hypnerotomachia Poliphili," I. xiv (with 
beautiful wood-cuts); Poliziano, " Giostra," I, st. 105-6; 
Muzio, " La Europa," in " Rime," Vinegia MDLI, ff. 146- 
151; Maffei, Canzonetta "Quel tuo caro soggiorno," in 
Parnaso Italiano, Vol. 52, p. 19 ; Marino, " Adone," VI, st. 
59 sqq. ; Spenser, " Muiopotmos " ; Greene, " Morando " 
(see post, pp. 399-400) ; Tennyson, " Palace of Art." It 
forms the subject of paintings by Veronese, Albani, Frans 
Wouters, Titian, Claude Lorraine, and Guido Reni. The 
lists given in the text and in this note do not profess to 
be exhaustive. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 73 

gather flowers; the gentle bull appears, and is 
described at length; she mounts upon his back 
and is carried out to sea ; in terror she holds his 
horn with one hand, while the other grasps his 
back or her garment; her garment flutters out 
sail-like in the breeze; she draws up her feet to 
keep them dry; her anxious companions follow 
to the water's edge, and wade hesitatingly in; 
sea-gods and sea-monsters gambol about; the 
bull " roars gently," answering Triton's horn ; 
Eros leads the procession, sometimes guiding the 
bull with reins, or with garlands of flowers. 
Such is the assortment from which now this 
group of images, now that, is chosen. Achilles 
Tatius employs nearly all. And of all these de- 
tails, it should be remembered, only one has the 
slightest relevancy to his romance : — the power 
of Eros. Even this does no more than furnish 
a pretext for the conversation between Clitophon 
and the author. All the rest is for show. In 
the same way, of all the details in the word- 
painting of the garden (I. xv), only one is even 
tangent to the story. The peacock, spreading his 
tail to woo his mate, suggests to Clitophon a 
text for the discourse on love's universal do- 
minion whereby he begins his courtship of Leu- 
cippe. The garden nowhere else touches the 
personages or their action ; it is nowise employed 
as a background ; like the picture of Europa, it is 
a word-painting, and a word-painting only. 48 

46 Considering the fondness of the Greek Romancers for 
representing all things to the eye, one is surprised to find 
them making such small use of Emblems. There are none 
in Longus. In Heliodorus I recall but one : " What man,'* 



174 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

The painting of Philomela (V. iii) though it 
has some tinge of relevancy in so far as it por- 
tends disaster from the excursion to Pharos, is 
none the less irrelevant in the fulness of its 
detail. The exact position and expression of the 
figures simply does not matter; it is only the 
subject, which, as a portent of Leucippe's abduc- 
tion, counts at all; but Achilles Tatius as usual 
enjoys playing his tour de force, dwells with 
gusto upon every particular of the painting — and 
then proceeds to render the whole description 
superfluous by telling, in addition, the story of 
Philomela. One or the other — either the story, 
or anything more than a bare mention of the 
subject of the picture — is surplusage. 

Where Achilles Tatius abandons the methods 
of word-painting, broadens his range of sensuous 
appeal, employs images of sound and movement, 

says Theagenes, speaking of the race he is about to run, 
at the goal of which stands Chariclea, " will look on 
Cariclia, and approch to her so hastily that he can get 
before me ? to whom can her eies give like wings, as to 
me, and cause him flie so faste? Know you not, that 
painters make love with two winges, declaring, as by a 
Riddle, the nimbleness of those that be in love?" (U ioo, 
IV. ii). Underdowne duly glosses : " Why Cupide is painted 
with two wings." Achilles Tatius has a fair sprinkling of 
Emblems. In Clitophon's dream (I. iii) the woman of 
dread aspect, holding a sickle in one hand and a sword 
in the other, is probably emblematic of Fate or of For- 
tune. At II. iv, Cupid's warlike equipment with bow and 
quiver, arrows and fire, is said to symbolize a lover's cour- 
age. Melitta's plea (V. xvi) marshals numerous nautical 
emblems of marriage. The Byzantine romancers, having 
had the benefit of mediaeval allegory, are richer in Em- 
blems. Eustathius, e. g., presents emblematic paintings of 
the four cardinal virtues — Justice, Temperance, Prudence, 
and Valor (II. i-vi), and of the twelve months (IV. iv- 
xviii) at enormous length and irrelevancy. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 75 

and suggests rather than analyzes emotion, he is 
more successful, as well as more relevant, — for 
instance, in his description of the ship getting 
under way (II. xxxii), or of Leucippe's modest 
dress and bearing when she is about to take 
the ordeal (VIII. xiii), and in the genre-pictures 
already noted (ante, p. 161). Forming part of 
the narrative, and partaking of its movement, 
these gain at once artistic sanction and artistic 
vitality. But they are the accidental exceptions. 
Most of the descriptions in " Clitophon and 
Leucippe " are of the kind already characterized, 
— without structural justification on the one 
hand, and confined on the other hand to a narrow 
range of stationary visual images foredoomed to 
tedious ineffectiveness. Examples abound. At 
I. iv Leucippe is described, and so vaguely that 
no reader can form the ghost of an idea how 
she looked ; at I. xix her beauty is compared with 
that of the peacock and of the garden, just as 
ineffectively. At II. iii and xi are descriptions — 
ingenious in themselves but wholly digressive and 
irrelevant — of a crystal wine-cup, a necklace, and 
a purple robe, — a propos whereof there are 
further digressions, upon the discovery of wine 
and of the uses of the purple fish. The mag- 
nificent sacrifice conducted by Callisthenes on 
behalf of the Byzantines (II. xv) — unlike the 
corresponding ceremonial in Heliodorus (III. 
i-v; see post, pp. 184-186) — does not combine 
with the attitude or action of the personages to 
form a picture, — does not, in a word, serve as 
background. The statue of Zeus Casius at Pelu- 



176 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

sium, and the paintings in his temple — Andro- 
meda rescued by Perseus, Prometheus rescued by 
Hercules (III. vi-viii) — are simply dragged in, 
without even the thin pretext that they suggest 
conversation. Leucippe's tears, and the mode 
in which they intensify the beauty of her eyes 
(VI. vii), afford a passage which "fairly bursts 
with the pride of word-pictures." 47 To conclude 
as we began, Achilles Tatius over-elaborates the 
outwardness of things exactly as we found him 
over-elaborating their inwardness ; his pictures 
" hors texte," like his psychology, are the trick of 
a rhetorician, not the work of an artist. No 
Lessing has arisen to tell him where lies the 
strength and where the weakness, respectively, of 
language and of visual form ; and there is present 
in him no fine native instinct to keep him, like 
Longus, on the right side of the boundary. 

Heliodorus is less the rhetorician and more 
the observer. He possesses a genuine talent for 
seizing the picturesque aspect of events, and for 
describing their progress in the form of great 
spectacles, — spectacles which, involved as they 
are in the story, are structurally justified. 48 This 
fondness for the spectacular, while it tends some- 
what to narrow Heliodorus's sensuous range to 
images chiefly of sight and movement, 49 at the 

4T Warren, p. 66. 

48 These genuine sensuous descriptions, which are almost 
always relevant, should be distinguished from his irrele- 
vant geography, zoology, literary criticism, Homeric dis- 
cussions, and other non-sensuous digressive matter. 

49 Longus employs the whole gamut, — form, color, move- 
ment, sound, smell, touch, taste, etc. ; Achilles Tatius rather 
neglects smell, touch and taste; Heliodorus is narrower 
than either. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 77 

same time saves him from mere e/ecfypacn*;. In all 
its great length, the "^Ethiopica " contains only 
one set and irrelevant description — that of the 
carved amethyst (V. xiii, xiv) given by Calasiris 
to Nausicles as a ransom for Chariclea ; and it 
contains no description at all of painting or sculp- 
ture. Even where such a description would have 
been wholly relevant, perhaps desirable, — as in 
the case of the painting of Andromeda which 
made so much trouble, — Heliodorus seems not to 
be so much as tempted. He " doesn't even hesi- 
tate" ; he goes right on with the story (IV. viii; 
X. xiv-xv). 

His strong inclination to notice the visual side 
of things gets satisfaction in other ways. Not 
content, for instance, with telling how a thing- 
looks, he tells also how the people who look at it 
look, how they open and close their eyes, shift 
their gaze from one point to another, and are 
affected in appearance by what they see. He is 
fond of describing persons, objects and actions 
by means of the impression they make upon some 
observer, whose changes of countenance he de- 
scribes in turn. This habit of treating the world 
of sight by way of its effect upon people is 
closely parallel to the method already noted 
(ante, pp. 144-145) of treating the world of 
thought and feeling by way of iraOos ; — the effort 
in each case being to represent not the thing 
itself, but that which the thing makes somebody 
feel. Heliodorus's pathetic optics — if I may so 
name the mannerism — strikes the reader at the 
very beginning of the "iEthiopica," dominating 

13 



178 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

as it does the whole of the first two chapters. 
The brigands look at the sea, and then turn to 
scrutinize the shore ; there they behold the pirate 
ship and the dead bodies of the pirates, slain 
feasting ; they are astonished and stupefied at the 
incomprehensible sight. Soon they discern 
Chariclea tending the wounds of Theagenes ; but 
her eyes, cast upon him, see them not; while 
his eyelids, drooping in his exhaustion, still per- 
mit his gaze to be drawn to her. She rises, her 
quiver of arrows clanging, her hair unbound, her 
robe shining in the sun; and the brigands are 
terrified at this apparition of a supposed goddess. 
Now she embraces Theagenes, and this action, 
observed by the brigands, proves her mortal; 
they approach ; their shadow falls within her field 
to vision; she looks up, — and so on. Verbs of 
seeing, verbs indicating the effects of sight, are 
surprisingly numerous. The effect occurs again 
and again. These brigands, like the band under 
Thyamis, and like Thyamis himself, are awe- 
struck by the beauty of Theagenes and Chariclea 
(I. iii, iv) ; so are the troops of Mithranes (V. 
vii). When Chariclea, unaware of the pres- 
ence of Calasiris and Cnemon at the house of 
Nausicles, is brought before them, " she looked 
up a little, and contrary to her expectation she 
saw and was seene, so that they all three began 
to cry out, and howle suddenly, as if there had 
beene a token geeven them when they should 
have begun" (U 132). The sentiment revealed 
in Theagenes and Chariclea's changes of coun- 
tenance as they both fall in love at the moment 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 79 

of his receiving the torch from her (TIL v) ; 
Theagenes's unsuccessful efforts to conceal his 
emotion from his guests (III. x, xi) ; Chariclea's 
involuntary bodily movements and changes of 
countenance as she follows with her eye the race 
between Theagenes and Ormenus (IV. iii) — 
these and much more of the same sort 50 are 
on the border between description and character- 
ization ; they belong as much to the one world 
as to the other,— and in both are conveyed 
through 7ra#o?. 

One " effect," at once pathetic and spectacular, 
occurs so often in the "^Ethiopica " that it seems 
to deserve special notice. I mean what may be 
called "hieratic epiphany." The disguised and 
wandering sun-god in old myths is from time to 
time made manifest, confounding his enemies and 
rejoicing his worshippers; and finally, his trials 
done, throws off his disguise for good and all, 
and reveals himself in splendor. So it is with 
the wandering hero, who, returning in beggar's 
weeds upon Apollo's holy day — the day of the 
New Moon after the winter solstice — stands 
forth from his rags, and smites his enemies with 
arrows inevitable as the arrows of the Far-Darter 
himself. 51 And so it is, too, with the wandering 
priest and priestess of the sun, likewise disguised 
as beggars and pilgrims, who yet from time to 

50 " A description of Theagenes " (VII. x) ; the sight of 
Theagenes inflames Arsace (VII. iv, vi) ; Theagenes' grace 
in waiting at table further inflames Arsace (VII. xxvn) ; 
Meroebus blushes through his black skin (X. xxiv) ; Per- 
sina is moved to compassion at the sight of her daughter's 
youth, beauty, and fortitude (X. vii), etc. 

61 Schwartz, " Fiinf Vortrage," pp. i7-*9- 



iSo THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

time show themselves for what they are, and 
strike the beholders with admiration, awe, pity or 
fear. No less than six times does Heliodorus 
make use of this hieratic epiphany. Chariclea 
at the Delphic games in honor of Pyrrhus shines 
in full priestly array, with sacred robe and laurel 
crown, quiver and torch (III. iv) ; again with 
these attributes of Artemis she appears to the 
brigands, a very goddess (I. ii) ; ceremonially 
robed for the bridal, she captivates Pelorus (V. 
xxxi) ; condemned to the stake by Arsace, she 
leaps lightly into the flames, which, retreating 
from her on all sides, only illuminate and enhance 
her radiant beauty, — so that the people cry out at 
the miracle, and are moved to rescue her (VIII. 
ix). Her ordeal upon the fiery altar (X. ix) is 
still more pathetic, and hieratic, and spectacular. 
" Shee tarried not, till they commanded her . . , 
but put uppon her the holy garment, that she 
brought from Delphi, . . . wrought with golde, 
and other costly juelles, 52 and when shee had cast 
her haire abroade, like one taken with divine 
furie, ranne and leapt into the fire, and stood 
there a great while without harme, and her 
beauty then appeared a great deal more, so that 
every man looked upon her, and by reason of her 
stoale thought her more like a Goddesse, than a 
mortal woman. Thereat was every man amazed, 
and muttered sore. . . . But Persina above all 
other was most sorrowfull ..." (U265). The 
scene containing the sixth instance, in which not 
only Chariclea, but Calasiris also, is revealed, is 

62 A mistranslation. The Greek means " wrought with 
gold and with rays of scarlet." 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION l8l 

so notable in other respects as well, that I reserve 
it for fuller discussion. 53 

It has been remarked (ante, pp. i7^~ l 77) that 
in Heliodorus the spectacular is relevant. The 
description is part of the story, the ornament is 
structural, the plot and the setting belong to each 
other. That which moves the plot, then,— Provi- 
dence or the sudden stroke of Fortune— is also 
the producer of the spectacles, the w^o?, as it 
were. In fact, this conception of the gods and 
fortune as makers of spectacles, as playwrights, 
in a word, does vitally affect the "iEthiopica." 
For Heliodorus, all the world's a stage, and the 
events in which his men and women play their 
parts constitute a drama, with its technical ap- 
paratus of prologue and epilogue, recognition and 
climax, main plot and episodes, " love-interest,' 
" machines " and scenery ;— a drama not lacking 
spectators, either; for, as has been seen, many 
of the scenes are set forth "pathetically," by way 
of their effect upon witnesses. Of this theatrical 
envisagement of situation, and of this employ- 
ment of theatrical terminology, a few examples 
must suffice. 54 Theagenes advising surrender to 
Mithranes's troops, exclaims: "Why do we not 
cut short the tragic poem of this divinity that 
persecutes us? . . . lest, by planning an intoler- 
able end of our play, he force us to suicide" (V. 
vi). At Cnemon's wedding, Chariclea laments: 

™Post, p. 187 ff. - '. , , .. 

«* The passages are collected, and discussed from the 
point of view of linguistics and archaeology, by J. W. H. 
Walden " Stage Terms in Heliodorus's yEthiopica {Har- 
vard Studies in Classical Philology, 1894, Vol. 5, PP- i-43). 



lS2 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

"Ye (gods) have drawn out our drama without 
end, — beyond all other dramas" (VI. viii). The 
sudden capture of Theagenes and Chariclea by 
the Ethiopians is spoken of by Heliodorus as 
"the prologue and first scene of a play, as it 
were" (wairep ev Spd/jLan irpoava^djvrja^ fcai 
irpoeiaohiov, IX. xvii). The unexpected meeting 
and recognition of Chariclea, Calasiris and Cne- 
mon is wondered at by Nausicles as a KaOdirep 
eVl <r/cr)vr]S avayvaypLapLos, (V. xi). Cnemon re- 
calls Calasiris to the point by the impatient re- 
mark, "You have introduced an episode foreign 
to your main action " ( y JL7reccr68iov Sr) tovto ovSeu 
7r/3o? tov Alovvctov eVeKJ/cf /cX^cra?, II. xxiv). The 
surprising presence of Thisbe's body in Egypt, 
far from Athens, where she was supposed to be 
(II. viii), and the surprising appearance of 
Chariclea before Hydaspes with the claim to be 
his daughter (X. xii), are recognized as coups 
de theatre: they are said to come about "as if 
by the machinery of the stage " {KaQdirep ifc 
fi7]%avris • wairep eVt a/cr}vr)$ • ■ • fcal olov etc fir]- 
%avr)<i avafyaivovaa) . Scenic envisagement of 
the background appears in Cnemon's complaint 
that Calasiris is omitting the details of the pomp 
at Delphi: "You have but opened the theatre, 
and straight shut it up againe " (U 79; III. i). 
The denouement is conceived most theatrically, 
if not dramatically. The spectators of the final 
scene, says Heliodorus, though some were too 
far away to witness all its details, nevertheless 
rejoiced ; some divine impulse perchance enabling 
them to understand its purport, — the same divine 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 83 

impulse which had composed the play itself 
(7} Ta^a real i £ opfJLrjs deias 77 crv/JL7ravTa ravr io-fcrj- 
voypd<j>r)o-ev, et? iirivoiav rcov a\r]6(bv e\#oWe?, 
X. xxxviii). The gods, likewise, have declared 
Chariclea to be Hydaspes' daughter, have brought 
her foster-father Charicles thither from Greece, 
as if ex machina, and have plainly designated 
the strange youth to be her bridegroom: such is 
the consummation of their favors, and the finale 
of the drama, (ol 6eol • • • ttjv iravoXfiiov Xapt- 
icXeiav ■ • • goi dvyarepa avaheitavres , kcl\ top 
TavTT}? rpocpea fcaOdirep ifc p-rj^avrj^ eV fiear]? ttj? 
'EAAaSo? ivTavO' avaTre/xyjravTe^ • • ■ vvv ttjv 
KOp(ovlha tcov ayaO&v /cal wcnrep \afi7rd810v 
Spdfiaros rbv vv/jl(J)LOv Trjs KoprjS tovtovi top %evov 
veaviav avacpr/vavTes, X. xxxix.) With a single 
exception, soon to be noticed, this scene exhibits 
more strikingly than any other Heliodorus's con- 
ception of his Romance as a series of theatrical 
spectacles arranged by superhuman agency. 55 

58 In Achilles Tatius this conception is much less promi- 
nent, is applied rather to incidents than to the action as a 
whole, and, as might have been expected, is transferred 
from the gods to fortune, vpxero rod Spd/xaros 17 tvxv (I. iii). 
'E/wi 5£ i) <tvvt)6t]S tvxv irdXiv kiriTiQzTai teal avvrlderai tear ' ifiov 
8pdfjux Kauvbv (VI. iii). Skilled courtship is likened to play- 
acting (I. x) ; so is the plausible story Melitta tells her 
husband (VI. x) ; Leucippe considers herself as acting a 
part under her pseudonym " Lacaena " (VI. xvi) ; Ther- 
sander's advocate slurs the oration of the priest as a piece 
of histrionics. On the other hand, it has been observed 
(ante, pp. 154-155, 157, 160-161) that Achilles Tatius, with- 
out saying so, often treats his situations like scenes in real- 
istic comedy. Longus, as already pointed out (ante, p. 122), 
uses once the apparatus of tragedy — a series of rumors and 
messages (III. xxxi ; IV. i, v, ix) ; and once, where Daphnis 
puts his goats through a musical drill, says that he arranged 
the spectators ftairep diarpov. 



184 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Enlarge the scale of Heliodorus's " pathetic 
optics"; magnify the place; increase the number 
of persons enacting or witnessing the coup de 
theatre, — the number of persons taking part in 
the spectacle or moved by the "hieratic epiph- 
any;" and you have those great ensemble 
scenes with which he delights to mark the chief 
points in his action. Of these, four may be 
noted ; the beginning of the adventure, at Delphi 
(III. i-iv; IV. i-iv) ; the first turn of fortune 
towards evil, in the capture by pirates (V. xxvi) ; 
the turn of fortune toward good, in the scene of 
reunion at Memphis (VII. v-viii) ; and the 
happy ending. It is upon such scenes that 
Heliodorus lavishes his talent for visual descrip- 
tion — a talent working there at its best, in the 
grandiose manner that is appropriate to the scene 
and characteristic of Heliodorus. — Calasiris is 
about to pass briefly over the ceremonies at 
Delphi: "After the Pompe and Funerall was 
ended — : Nay Father (quoth Cnemon interrupt- 
ing him) it is not done yet, seeing your talke 
hath not made mee also looke thereon . . . who 
desire wonderfully to behold the whole order 
thereof" (U. 79). Accordingly Calasiris de- 
scribes in detail the first part of the procession, — 
the hecatombs of oxen, the flocks of other vic- 
tims, the lesser ministers of Apollo in attendance, 
the maidens dancing with baskets of fruit and 
flowers, and vases of perfumes and conserves; 
and the second part, consisting of the singers of 
the Hymn to Thetis. He then proceeds, deliber- 
ately conscious of sensuous effect : " The dance 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 85 

which accompanied this song was so well adapted 
to it, and the cadence of their steps agreed so 
exactly with the melody . . . that for awhile, in 
spite of the magnificence of the spectacle, the 
sense of seeing was overpowered and suspended 
by that of hearing. ... At length a band of 
youths on horseback, with their splendidly 
dressed commander, . . . afforded a spectacle 
far preferable to any sounds" (III. iii; B 64). 
The spectacle is that of Theagenes's escort, whose 
dress, mounts and accoutrements are minutely 
described. Theagenes follows. — " . . . He was 
on horseback also, with a speare of Ashe poynted 
with Steele in his hands, he had no helmet on, 
but was bare headed. His cloke was of Purple 
wrought with Golde, wherein was the battell of 
the Centaures and Lapithes : on the button of his 
cloke was Pallas pictured, bearing a shielde be- 
fore her breast, wherein was Gorgons head. The 
comelines and commendation of that which was 
done, was some what increased by the easie blow- 
ing of the winde, which mooved his haire about 
his necke, parting it before his forhead, and made 
his cloake wave, and the nether parts thereof 
to cover the back and buttocks of his horse. You 
would have sayde that hys horse did knowe the 
beautie of his master, and that he beeing very 
faire him selfe, did beare a passing seemely man, 
he rayned so, and with pricked up eares he tossed 
his head and rolled his eyes fiercelie, and 
praunced, and leapt in so fine sort. When he 
had the raynes a little at will, he would set for- 
ward couragiously, and turne about on both sides, 



1 86 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

and beat the ground with the tippes of his houfes 
lightly, and moderate his fiercenes with the pleas- 
auntnesse of his pace" (U 81-2). Nor is the 
effect upon the spectators forgotten: the men 
praise Theagenes, the women pelt him with 
apples and flowers. And now appears Chariclea, 
described with the same particularity, — more 
beautiful even than Theagenes, — her eyes shin- 
ing with greater splendor than that of the sacred 
torch she bears. This torch she presents to 
Theagenes : — at that moment their eyes meet, and 
they love. The background is magnificent, — the 
temple of Apollo, with a vast assemblage in splen- 
did attire solemnly grouped around the altar; 
while at the altar, the centre of all eyes, are the 
pair of young lovers, hieratic, beautiful. No 
wonder that Raphael is supposed to have painted 
this scene (III. iv, v). Again at the race (IV. 
iii, iv) we have the same pictorial "composi- 
tion " : a monumental background of architec- 
ture; a throng of spectators symmetrically dis- 
posed about the amphitheatre ; and again, now 
in the arena, the two or three central figures: 
" Chariclea glistered at the race ende ... in her 
left hand she had a burning taper, and in the 
other a branche of palme, and as soone as she 
appeared, every man looked upon her. . . . After 
they had run the middle of the race . . . (The- 
agenes) turned him a little about, and frowning 
upon Ormenus, lifted up his shield aloft, and 
stretched out his necke, and with face fast fixed 
uppon Cariclia, at last he got to the race end, 
and start so farre before, that the Archadian 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1S7 

was many yardes behinde" (U 99, 101). The 
scene of the capture by pirates, where Chariclea 
embraces the pirate's knees, pleading for the life 
of Calasiris and Theagenes (V. xxvi), is also 
said to have been painted by Raphael. Here too 
there is a large and various background — two 
ships grappled; two crews, one victorious, one 
defeated; and, as before, the group of two in 
the centre, now with a subsidiary pair besides. 56 

The closing passages of the story — the ordeals 
before the King, Queen, priesthood and people 
of Ethiopia in solemn assembly; the procession 
of embassadors bearing rich gifts ; the wrestlings- 
bout of Theagenes with " the Duke's champion," 
and his wonderful feat of driving the horse and 
the bull together and felling the bull ; the sudden 
appearance of Charicles to resolve the complica- 
tion; the mystic pomp and trionfo with which 
all ends — these likewise afford many spectacles 
of dignity and splendor, involving an ample scenic 
background, and a great multitude to be touched 
and moved. 

But even these great scenes, rich and various 
as they are, do not sum up and blend so many of 
the characteristics of Heliodorus as does the 
scene of recognition, reunion and reconciliation 
under the walls of Memphis (VII. v-viii), — a 
scene which in structure, function, and ornament 
is the most representative passage of the "yEthio- 

68 Concerning the tradition that Raphael painted these 
scenes, I can only say, with Wilson (Dunlop, " Hist, of 
Fiction," I. 36, note) and Oeftering (p. 167), that I have 
found no confirmation of it, or indication of the where- 
abouts of the paintings. 



1 88 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

pica." The situation is notably structural. It 
marks and effects the transition from one main 
set of misadventures — those caused by storms, 
pirates and brigands, — to the other main set — 
those due to intrigue and illicit passion. 57 This 
transition it accomplishes, first by inserting be- 
tween the two sets of misadventures a moment 
of good fortune, wherein persons separated are 
reunited and persons at odds are reconciled ; and 
secondly by giving occasion both to drop the sub- 
sidiary persons involved in the first set (Calasiris, 
who dies immediately afterward, and Thyamis, 
who takes no further part in the action), and to 
introduce the subsidiary persons ( Arsace, Cybele, 
etc.) involved in the second set. Structural it is 
moreover in the sense that it is directly controlled 
by the forces that are at work to move the re- 
mainder of the plot. The arrival of Calasiris, 
sudden and surprising though it be, comes never- 
theless in fulfilment of an oracle and of a necro- 
mantic prophecy. At the same time it is not out- 
side the course of Nature; he is brought to the 
scene by following the adventures of Theagenes 
and Chariclea, who came into his life in conse- 
quence of his retreat to Delphi. So that we have 
the combination which Aristotle commends, of 
the unexpected with the caused; and we have it 
expressly ascribed to Fortune working under 
Providence (ante, p. 116). Furthermore, inCal- 
asiris's revelation of himself to his sons, and 
Chariclea's revelation of herself to Theagenes, 

w As for the danger of being sacrificed by the Ethiopians, 
I count that out for the present purpose, as being — struc- 
turally speaking — only the " moment " of last suspense. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 89 

we have a double " hieratic epiphany " ; Calasiris 
drops his disguise of rags, and stands forth in his 
priestly robe ; Chariclea speaks the word Pythius, 
and reminds Theagenes of her sacred torch. — 
Again, the whole passage is avowedly theatrical : 
the spectators on the walls are likened to the spec- 
tators at a play ; the arrival of Calasiris is likened 
to that of an actor ex machina, and is termed 
" an episode," or " the beginning of a rival ac- 
tion" — (viz., an action rivaling in interest the 
fight between the brothers) ; Chariclea's entrance 
is " a new interlude " ; her encounter with Thea- 
genes, "the love interest of the play"; several 
recognitions are involved; and the conclusion is 
that " the tragedy, which threatened bloodshed, 
had passed into a comedy." Spectacular the sit- 
uation is too, and most grandiose and " pathetic." 
The scene of action is no less than the whole 
exterior of a city, its walls and gateways thronged 
with people, — and the plain below, where, against 
this monumental background, the five protago- 
nists move in shifting groups. Meanwhile, Ar- 
sace feeds her eyes and her passion upon the 
beauty of Theagenes; the spectators now laugh 
at the futility of Calasiris's interference, now 
"stand like pictures," and now are "overcome 
with wonder " ; and at the end, spontaneously, 
they form a Trionfo, with torches, and pipes and 
flutes, marching in pomp to the Temple of Isis. 
This is Heliodorus at his best, at his most char- 
acteristic: spectacular, optical, "pathetic," theat- 
rical, hieratic, grandiose. 

But even at his best, Heliodorus inevitably and 



190 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

painfully reminds us of the fundamental vice of 
the Greek Romancers, — their fatal lack of spirit- 
uality. Most spiritually minded of them all, con- 
ceiving his theme in something like the grand 
manner, with some attempt at breadth and no- 
bility, he yet commits himself, like the rest, to 
the task — not of spiritualizing the world of sense 
by interpreting it in terms of character and divine 
destiny, — but of making character and divine des- 
tiny minister to the pleasures of the world of 
sense. For him, the gods, and human excellence 
as well, are producers of spectacles. One last 
illustration will suffice, and will close this discus- 
sion. There are three scenes, one in Longus, one 
in Achilles Tatius, one in Heliodorus, so much 
alike that they almost seem to represent a con- 
vention of the genre. Daphnis escapes drowning, 
and triumphantly half-swims, half-rides ashore 
suported on the horns of two of his cattle, "as 
in a chariot" (I. xxx). Clinias upon a yard gal- 
lantly rides the waves, and as he is driven near 
Clitophon and Leucippe cries out, " Hold fast, 
Clitophon!" (III. v). Theagenes having felled 
the bull "lay upon him, and with his left hand 
held him downe, but lifted his right hand up to 
heaven, and looked merrilie upon Hydaspes and 
all that were there els, who laughed, and were 
much delighted with that sight, and they heard 
that the Bull with his lowing declared the famous- 
ness of the victorie, as wel as if it had been 
declared with a trumpet" (U 281^2; X. xxx). 
In all these scenes the young man by his own 
efforts triumphs over physical danger, — indeed is 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 191 

placed visibly over the thing he conquers, and in 
manifest control of it; and he is free from any 
sign of fear, — nay in two cases shows a smiling 
nonchalance. The heroism of Theagenes is fur- 
ther enhanced by the fact that he himself seeks 
the danger, having undertaken this feat of his 
own motion; and by the fact that he is actually 
awaiting death at the time, but can yet muster 
up courage to make so brave a show. — What, 
then, does this valor, this virtus, amount to? 
What, in the hero's supreme hour, is this final 
manifestation of his excellence? Why, a mere 
piece of theatricals ; a bit of spectacular heroics ; 
a mountebank's feat; a trick of the arena, per- 
formed by an animal-tamer " to make a Roman 
holiday." And this at the end of the most spir- 
itual of the Greek Romances ! Finally, it is note- 
worthy that this passage, like all the other great 
spectacular passages lately cited, signifies as much 
for plot and for character as for setting. The 
wheel has come full circle: plot, character, set- 
ting, — what was found true of one is found true 
of all; and what is found true of all in Helio- 
dorus is found true of all, a fortiori, in Longus 
and Achilles Tatius. " Wahn, Wahn, iiberall 
Wahn!" One and all they subject the spirit to 
the sense; one and all they minister to the lust 
and pride of the eye; one and all they rest in a 
world of sound and show, — sunk in matter, and 
"bound upon the Wheel of Things." Not until 
the Renaissance revives their influence does there 
again appear so striking a specimen of the world's 
literature of illusion. 



193 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Such is the content of the Greek Romances, 
such their matter, — conveniently set forth as 
Plot, Character, and Setting. And as these three 
are often indivisible, — for example in the spec- 
tacular scenes just now noticed, — so are Struc- 
ture and Style in large part inseparable from 
them and from each other. Yet it will be con- 
venient to make the division: to speak of the 
form of these Romances apart from their matter 
or content just expounded, and to treat this form 
under its separate aspects of Structure and Style. 
Always, though, the endeavor will be to show 
how all these are connected rather than disjoined; 
to show, more especially, how they are all refer- 
able to the common characteristics of the genre or 
to the particular author's conception of his work. 



Heliodorus, conceiving his Romance as a prose 
epic, 58 constructs it upon the approved epic plan. 
He takes the reader at once in medias res, at a 
point where the action has already become com- 
plicated, and lets it explicate itself gradually 
through the speech of the personages. "Action 
first, explanation afterwards " is his device to 
maintain interest. This narrative structure has 
been much commended; 59 and it would indeed 
deserve all praise were it carried out with any 
sort of moderation, and were Theagenes and 
Chariclea so characterized at the beginning as to 
make the reader willing to keep his interest on a 
continual strain until he shall find out their pre- 

58 Cf. p. 157, ante. 

99 See citations at Oeftering, 21-22. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 193 

vious history. In " A Tale of Two Cities "—to 
take an illustration per contra — the full chain of 
causes that make the beginning of the story is not 
revealed until within a few pages of the end (by 
Dr. Manette's prison-diary, read at the trial of 
Darnay) ; thus the suspense is maintained still 
longer than in the "^thiopica " ; yet the reader 
is kept engaged, because the personages have been 
made intrinsically interesting from the first. Not 
so the personages of the "^thiopica."— Nor has 
Heliodorus kept measure in the execution of his 
involved plan. Calasiris " tells the story of his 
life" — which includes the adventures of Thea- 
genes and Chariclea previous to the opening 
scene— not only at disproportionate length, but 
under unjustifiable interruptions. Cnemon's story 

itself only an episode — likewise comes out 

piecemeal. Neither is finished at a sitting, like 
Aeneas's narrative to Dido, or Odysseus's to the 
Phaeacians ; 60 and between the several instal- 
ments there intervene events contemporary with 
the telling: the arrival of Nausicles, the arrival of 
Chariclea, her lamentations, Cnemon's fright, etc., 
which put the reader to a strain not warranted by 
his interest. Cnemon's story is even interlaced 
with Calasiris's; and the reader must forborne 
time, like a juggler keeping three oranges in the 
air at once, bear in mind three distinct and non- 

00 To be sure, Odysseus's preliminary account, of how he 
had been cast ashore and had met Nausicaa, is separated 
from the body of his narrative; but these events, being 
known to the reader, are merely recapitulated, and involve 
no strain of attention. 

H 



194 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

coordinate 61 lines of narrative: — the events act- 
ually current; Calasiris's story still unfinished; 
and Cnemon's story still unfinished (V. ii, VI. 
ii) . Here again we have an effect of Heliodorus's 
peculiar conception of his work — this time an 
effect of his theatrical conception of it. 62 He 
applies to his narrative, already complex enough, 
the technique of the stage. He will tell as little 
as possible ; he declines the role of the omniscient 
novelist speaking of his men and women in the 
third person; they must do their own talking. 
Hence, let the continuity of the tale suffer as it 
will, nobody is known till he actually appears on 
the scene; nobody's appearance is prepared for; 
and each person when he does appear must tell 
in the first person " the story of his life." So far 
does Heliodorus carry this inappropriate dramatic 
method that at one time (II. xxx-xxxii) there is 
a fourfold involution of the narrative: (i) Cala- 
siris and Cnemon being at Chemmis in the course 
of the current narrative, (2) Calasiris quotes to 
Cnemon what (3) Charicles at Delphi quoted to 
him (Calasiris) as having been (4) said to him 
(Charicles) by Sisimithres at Catadupi! A nest 
of boxes — " cycle and epicycle, orb in orb." 
This mixture of methods epic and dramatic has 

61 There is no undue strain involved in following several 
coordinate threads of a plot, — e. g., the several adventures 
of different persons or groups. But this is not the task 
here ; the stories of Cnemon and of Calasiris are both sub- 
ordinate to the current story ; they both constitute a pre- 
vious part of it ; they both are needed to account for it ; 
and so should no more be mingled with it than cause 
should be mingled with effect. 

*" Cf. ante, pp. 157, 181-184. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 95 

several further results. In the first place, while it 
complicates the pattern, it renders the fabric 
sleazy, open-meshed, and, here and there, discontin- 
uous. An author who loses sight of his personages 
for five books at a time would be extraordinary if 
he did not sometimes forget the circumstances in 
which he left them. There are several such " loose 
threads " in the "^Ethiopica." 63 Moreover, its 
time-scheme is excessively obscure. The reader 
is glad if he can realize that X, which is told long 
chapters after Y, actually occurred before it; 
content if he can keep time-sequence clear, he 
allows himself a general uninquiring sense of 
obscurity about time-length. Analysis might in- 
deed show that the chronology is quite consistent : 
the point is, that the reader is left with the feel- 
ing that it is not. Again, this open-work fabric 
leaves room, in its wide meshes, for the insertion 
of every kind of irrelevancy. The main story of 
the "JEthiopica," for fully half its course, is de- 
graded to the level of a " frame-tale," and made 
to enclose the incidental novella of Cnemon, the 
narratives, wheel within wheel, of Calasiris, Char- 
icles, and Sisimithres, and innumerable fragments 
of pseudo-science, geography, and apocryphal 
literary history and criticism: a disquisition on 
the evil eye (U 86-87; HI- vii-viii),on the white 
and black magic of the Egyptians (U 92; III. 

63 At I. xxxii, Thyamis is taken prisoner; at VI. iii, he 
is reported to be heading a band of insurgents. There is 
no account of what happened between. At I. xxx-xxxi, he 
supposes that he has killed Chariclea ; at VII. vii ff, he 
meets her without surprise. (Pointed out, among other 
" loose threads," by Walden, i n. 2.) 



I96 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

xvi), on the inundation of the Nile (U 68-9; II. 
xxviii) ; "A rule of Homer, how to knowe the 
gods: expounded by Calasiris" (U 90; III. xii- 
xiii) ; "A pretty discourse, whereby Calasiris 
proveth Homer to be an Egyptian" (U 91; III. 
xiv) and other " Prettie Heathenish questions." 
This irrelevancy is so characteristic of the Greek 
Romance as a genre, that though touched upon 
before, it must be returned to again and again. 
In actual bulk, probably not less than a quarter 
of the "iEthiopica " consists either of matters 
irrelevant, or of matters relevant unduly ex- 
panded. 64 Finally, Heliodorus's narrative struc- 

94 Relevant matter unduly expanded : The lengthy ac- 
counts of Hydaspes' siege of Syene and battle with Oroon- 
dates, which occupy the whole of Book IX, and give color 
to the " legend that in the sixteenth century it (the 
'^thiopica ') was gravely considered a handbook of tac- 
tics " (Whibley, Introd., p. xiv). " The oration of Thyamis 
to his mates . . . (containing) the duetie of a good Cap- 
taine. . . . Three things worth noting and following in 
choice of a wife" (U 29-30 Glosses). "The oration of 
Thyamis . . . (showing) How warre with theeves is ended " 
(U 37 do.). " Calasiris dissembled oration " (to the Del- 
phians) (U 117, 18 do.); " Caricles pitifull oration about 
the taking away of Cariclia " (U 118 do.) ; " Hegesias Ora- 
tion as touching the pursuite of those who tooke away 
Cariclia. Occasion is of most force in warre" (U 119 
do.). " Cariclia's pittiful complaint being separated from 
Theagenes " (U 125 do.) ; "The sorrowe that Cariclia was 
in, at Cnemon his marriage" (U 163 do.). "A wise ora- 
tion of a gentle man of Syene" (U 238 do.). "The 
oration of Hydaspes souldiers . . . wherein Hydaspes is 
commended for all the vertues requisite or needful for a 
King" (U 238 do.). "Great matters may not be sleightly 
handled, and here is a passing witty conference betweene 
Theagenes and Cariclia" (U 253 do.). "A pretty commu- 
nication between Hydaspes and Oroondates " (U 250 do.). 
" All the oration of Hydaspes, declareth what is the dutie 
of a good King " (U 272 do.). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 97 

ture lends itself to dramatic retardation: the 
story, as has been said, comes out in driblets; 
between any two portions concerning any given 
interest there are likely to be interpolated half a 
dozen other portions concerning other interests; 
so that, besides an effect of pleasurable suspense, 65 

The episode of the sojourn with Tyrrhenus (V. xviii- 
xxii) is relevant ; not so Tyrrhenus's deafness, and his 
conversation at cross-purposes with Calasiris. The char- 
acter of Tyrrhenus is not worked out with this deafness as 
an element in it, or indeed worked out at all ; nor does 
anything happen in the plot because of this deafness, or 
because of the conversation at cross-purposes (U 137-8; 
V. xviii). In the same way, when Calasiris, Nausicles and 
Cnemon leave Chemmis to seek Theagenes (VI. iii-iv), 
and Heliodorus needs somebody to tell them that Mithranes 
has moved toward Bessa, he creates for the purpose a 
nameless acquaintance of Nausicles ; but, not contented with 
letting him tell his news, weaves an irrelevant episode 
about him : makes him out to be in love with one Isias, 
an exacting mistress, at whose behest he is taking to her 
a " Phoenicopter." About this there ensues a bit of rally- 
ing conversation ; the nameless lover says what the author 
created him to say, and is then absolutely dropped, and 
never heard of again. Episodes engaging in themselves, 
and exhibiting much the same sort of creative profusion 
as Dickens exhibits when he creates and throws away 
(" David Copperfield," ch. I) the woman who bought 
David's caul. 

68 " II lasciar l'auditore sospeso procedendo dal confuso 
al distinto, dall' universale a' particolari . . . e una delle 
cagioni che fa piacer tanto Eliodoro." T. Tasso, Opere, X, 
103, ed. Venez. (So quoted and cited by Jacobs, Einleitung 
to his translation of the "^Ethiopica.") 

Artistic suspense : — At the race at Delphi, says Calasiris, 
" ' the spectators were on the very tiptoe of expectation, 
and full of solicitude for the issue ; and I more than all. 
. . .' 'No wonder,' said Cnemon, ' that those present were 
in an agony of expectation, when I, even now, am trem- 
bling for Theagenes. Deliver me, therefore, I beseech you, 
as soon as you can, out of my suspense ' " (B 81 ; IV. iii). 
Here the reader's suspense is heightened both by the inter- 
ruption itself, which delays the telling of the outcome, *nd 



198 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

the reader is quite likely to feel an effect of dis- 
traction and irritation anything but pleasurable. 
He grows impatient for the event ; but no : " Der 
Vorhang [wird] erst nach und nach weiter auf- 
gezogen und das voile Geheimnis erst am Ende 
enthullt." 66 The end is in fact the most provok- 
ing example of this retarding policy. We know 
that all's bound to come out right; yet we must 
first undergo Chariclea's circumlocutions and ter- 
giversations, next be distracted by the reception 
of the ambassadors, then be distracted again by 
Theagenes's gladiatorial exhibition, and finally 
suffer the knot to be untied, not by Chariclea's 
explanation at all, but by the totally unexpected 
arrival of Charicles. Involution, complication, 
interruption of the story, insertion of matter 
irrelevant, episodic, or unduly expanded, retarda- 
tion, suspense, and cheap surprise — all, it seems, 
are of a piece; all are the natural results of a 
narrative method that is overstrained and vitiated 
by the desire for alien effects. 67 

by the content of the interruption — Cnemon's own sus- 
pense. The effect is made possible by Heliodorus's dra- 
matic method, of having the event related to a hearer. 

09 Christ, p. 848. 

6T Among the effects of dramatic technique upon Helio- 
dorus's narrative method there should perhaps be reckoned 
the employment of the confidant. The functions of this 
personage — to take the place of the Chorus in commenting 
and moralizing the action ; to take the place of monologue 
in enabling the hero to free his mind ; to explain an open- 
ing situation, or in general t<x e£w rijs Tpayydias, or in par- 
ticular whatever has happened to the confidant and his 
interlocutor before their present meeting ; to support the 
hero in affliction and dissuade him from suicide ; — these 
functions are in the "^thiopica " performed for the most 
part by Calasiris (cf. Ttichert, pp. 15-17). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 1 99 

Longus tells his plain tale in chronological or- 
der, except, of course, that he reserves the reve- 
lation of Daphnis and Chloe's parentage. He 
strives after no effects alien to legitimate narra- 
tive, allows the succession of the seasons to carry 
the story along, and relates things when they 
occur, regardless of involution or complication, 
retardation or suspense. His episodes — the Met- 
amorphosis of the Ring-dove (I. xxvii) ; Philetas's 
idyl of Love in a Garden (II. xxxvi) ; the Myth 
of Pan and Syrinx (II. xxxiv) and of Pan and 
Echo (III. xxiii) ; the argument of ' Methym- 
naeans vs. Daphnis' (II. xv-xvi) ; and the de- 
scriptive passages (ante, pp. 166-169) ; — nearly 
all fall well within the frame of his very simple 
plot and his very loose idyllic plan. No strict 
unity is to be expected of a writer who professes 
to offer only a succession of pictures ; and we are 
again astonished at Longus's moderation. 

Achilles Tatius makes Clitophon tell his own 
story to the listening author, but soon forgets 
that he has adopted this method : the author, un- 
like Cnemon, nowhere interrupts the narrative, 
nor does he "envelope" it at the end, as at the 
beginning, by resuming his account of himself. 
Neither does Clitophon carry out consistently his 
own narrative in the first person: he assumes 
omniscience wherever Achilles Tatius finds it con- 
venient, and often reports conversations, and 
thoughts, feelings and motives, some of which 
he could certainly not have known at the time 
they occurred, and some of which he could never 
have known at all. For example, in Book VI: 



200 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

what happened at the door of the room which 
had been Clitophon's place of confinement, after 
the return of the slave-girl who guided him out 
of the house (ii) ; the conversation between 
Thersander and Sosthenes (iii-iv) ; Melitta's 
shrewd plan and her speeches to Thersander ( viii- 
xi) ; what Thersander and Sosthenes did and said 
before entering the cottage (xv, xvii). But 
though Achilles Tatius is not master, in the large, 
of this dramatic method of telling his story, he 
several times displays dramatic art of no mean 
order 68 in choosing persons to relate its incidents. 
It is from her mother Panthea that Leucippe 
learns of the escape of Clio (II. xxviii) ; it is 
Melitta herself who, not knowing Leucippe, tells 
her that Clitophon has been faithful (V. xxii) ; 
and it is Leucippe, who, unaware that Thersander 
is listening to her soliloquy, informs him that 
there has been no adultery between Clitophon and 
Melitta (VI. xvi). In every case the words gain 
in force from the speaker, the situation, and the 
hearer. This narrative, moreover, which makes 
such effective occasional use of dramatic situa- 
tion, is quite unhampered by the conventions of 
the epic. It begins at the beginning, follows, for 
the most part, the chronological order, and never 
puzzles the reader. Its straightforward ordon- 
nance naturally aids the author in taking care of 
his time-relations, which, indeed, he has accu- 
rately thought out in detail. The flight of Clito- 
phon and Leucippe with Clinias, their shipwreck, 

68 Cf. ante, pp. 154, 160. — The role of confidant, in " Clit- 
ophon and Leucippe," is divided among Clinias, Satyrus, 

and Menelaus. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 201 

the rescue of Clinias, and his return to Tyre — 
together occupy precisely five days ; so that Clin- 
ias, having given out that he was to be in the 
country ten days, finds it easy to allay suspicion, 
and prevent his complicity in the elopement from 
transpiring. Two days after Clinias, Hippias re- 
turns from the journey on which he was absent 
when Clitophon and Leucippe eloped. Upon his 
arrival he finds waiting for him his half-brother's 
letter, which arrived just one day after the elope- 
ment (V. x). — The deviations from chronolog- 
ical order are both made in the interest of sus- 
pense: the mystery of the supposed decapitation 
of Leucippe (V. vii) is not cleared up till within 
a few chapters of the end (VIII. xv) ; the no- 
vella of Callisthenes and Calligone, suspended at 
the latter's abduction (II. xviii), is not resumed 
till VIII. xvii, and not completed till the last 
chapter of all, where it is again brought into line 
with the main plot, contemporaneously with 
which it ends. 

This novella is bound to the main plot by a 
single thread, but a very strong one : the abduc- 
tion of Calligone renders impossible her marriage 
to Clitophon as planned, and permits the success- 
ful prosecution of his love-affair with Leucippe. 
In so far, it is not so irrelevant as the novella of 
Cnemon, in the "^Ethiopica." 69 But in the num- 
ber and the bulk of his irrelevancies Achilles 
Tatius far exceeds Heliodorus; if the "iEthio- 

69 The irrelevancy of Cnemon's story is disguised. He 
tells the instalments at so many places in the course of the 
main plot that the novella as a whole has the appearance 
of being structurally interwoven with it. 



202 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

pica " is about a quarter out of its frame, " Clito- 
phon and Leucippe" must be nearly half out. 
Only one possible artistic purpose can be served 
by these divagations, — that of retardation and 
suspense, — an effect which the interruption of 
main plot by episode or novella, and of episode 
or novella by main plot, and of any or all by 
digression, excursus and expansion, may produce 
now and then. But such is the mass, and such 
the damnable iteration, of the irrelevancies in 
" Clitophon and Leucippe," that for the most part 
they simply put the reader out of patience. Some 
of the chief of them having already been dis- 
cussed will now be only recapitulated ; others will 
be noted more fully, and certain of their pecu- 
liarities pointed out. The ma j ority may be roughly 
classified as Irrelevancies of Plot, Irrelevancies 
of Characterization, and Irrelevancies of Setting 
— a rough and overlapping classification which 
will leave an important group to be treated as a 
supplementary class: Irrelevant Science and 
Pseudo-Science. 

Irrelevancies of Plot. — The episode of Clinias's 
favorite Charicles, of the compulsory marriage 
proposed for him, 70 and of his death by a fall 
from his horse 71 (I. vii-viii; xii-xiv), does not 
touch the plot at a single point : it does not even 
appear that Clinias was the more willing to leave 
Tyre because of his friend's death. Equally un- 

70 Which in turn gives occasion to a tirade against women 
and marriage. 

71 Which in turn gives occasion to three displays of 
rhetoric, — the description of the runaway horse, and the 
lamentations for the youth by his father and by Clinias 
respectively. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 203 

connected with the plot is the corresponding epi- 
sode of Menelaus's favorite, whom Menelaus 
accidentally killed in an endeavor to save him 
from a boar (II. xxxiv). The digressions on the 
origin of wine (II. ii) and on the discovery of 
the purple dye (II. xi) have no better pretext 
than that a wine-cup is used at a feast, and that 
a purple robe is part of the wedding-outfit. Co- 
nops and his amusing interchange of Aesopic 
fables with Satyrus play no part whatever. Conops 
does not hinder, nor does his defeat in this skir- 
mish of wits promote, the rendezvous or the 
elopement: at the last moment he just happens 
to be out of the way, absent on an errand (II. 
xx-xxii, xxxi). The shipwreck of the eloping 
party (III. iv) and the consequent hiring of 
another vessel by Clitophon and Leucippe to take 
them to Alexandria (III. ix) are of exceedingly 
doubtful relevancy. Clitophon and Leucippe were 
on a ship bound for Alexandria anyway ; so that 
— (eliminating the shipwreck) — the Herdsmen's 
attack might just as well have been made upon 
the original ship at the same point in its voyage 
up the Nile. It may plausibly be urged that the 
wreck has an effect upon the plot in that it sepa- 
rates Clitophon and Leucippe from their com- 
panions; that the Herdsmen consequently, cap- 
turing our pair at a different time and place from 
Menelaus and Satyrus, are unaware that the pris- 
oners are all friends; and hence are willing to 
entrust to Menelaus and Satyrus the task of sac- 
rificing Leucippe — a willingness which proves to 
be her salvation. But such a separation of the 



204 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

party might just as easily have been brought about 
during the confusion incident to the Herdsmen's 
capture of the original ship. Furthermore, why 
should Clitophon and Leucippe, wrecked at Pelu- 
sium, go on to Alexandria at all? It is only 
accident (II. xxxi) that makes Alexandria their 
destination in the first place; so that, if the ship 
that happens to be bound thither is wrecked, 
they have no particular purpose in going thither 
alone. If, then, the author wished them to go to 
Alexandria, and to be exposed to the attack of 
river-pirates on the way, he might much more 
plausibly have left them on their first ship, adher- 
ing with some sort of probability to the destina- 
tion which chance had assigned them. The wreck 
had better have been left out. Of course, the 
omission would have deprived Achilles Tatius of 
numerous show-pieces: the storm, the fight for 
the boats, Clinias riding the waves, Clitophon's 
prayer to Poseidon, and the statue and the paint- 
ings at Pelusium. — Charmides's reinforcements 
are delayed by the appearance of the Phoenix 
(III. xxiv-xxv), — a delay which has no effect 
one way or the other upon the expedition, has no 
further connection with the story, and is ob- 
viously introduced to give occasion for an account 
of the Phoenix itself, one degree further removed 
from relevancy. The story of Philomela (V. vi) 
is uncalled for, given the painting (ante, p. 174). 
Between the first court-scene (VII. vii-xii) and 
the second (VIII. viii-xi) the idea comes to 
Thersander that he will challenge Leucippe and 
Melitta to the ordeal; this he threatens in the 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 205 

temple (VIII. ii) ; and this he has in reserve 
throughout the second trial. The moment he 
actually makes the challenge (VIII. xi) he ren- 
ders nugatory the three preceding chapters of 
forensic display : his own attack (viii), the Priest's 
defence (ix) and Sopater's supplementary attack 
(x). These speeches have nothing whatever to 
do with the course of the story; there is no pre- 
tense that the decision is influenced by them; in 
fact the decision is taken out of court altogether 
and left to divine judgment; they are words, — 
words and nothing more. So of the dubbio (II. 
xxxv-xxxviii) on boys and women: it has "noth- 
ing to do with the case." Nothing leads to it, 
nothing depends upon it; it leads to no choice, 
and is the outcome of no choice. Clitophon intro- 
duces it merely to make talk. 72 All these irrele- 

" The difference between a relevant and an irrelevant 
debat appears neatly if the above be contrasted with (a) 
the argument between Clitophon and Melitta, upon her 
prayer that he yield to her (A. T., V. xv-xvi) ; (b) the argu- 
ment between Theagenes and Chariclea of the question 
whether she shall disclose her identity to Hydaspes (iEth., 
IX. xxiii) ; (c) the argument between Daphnis and Dorco 
of the question which is the more beautiful (D. & C, I. 
xv-xvii) ; — decided by Chloe, who gives the victor a kiss. 
This last debat, though a part of Courier's fragment and 
hence unknown to the Renaissance, is of special interest. 
The dispute itself — (the familiar amoeboeic pastoral con- 
test) — and its subject — (the beauty of the contestants) — 
are of the old world ; the judge — (a young girl loved by 
the contestants), and the reward — (her favor) — are of the 
new world that will produce the Courts of Love. — A regular 
\ove-dubbio, with judge and decision complete, occurs in 
Iamblichus, " Babylonica," viii : To one of her three lovers 
a girl gives her cup, to another the wreath from her head, 
to the third a kiss. They submit to an old man, an expert, 
the question which has been most favored. He decides for 
the third. 



3o6 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

vancies of plot, — and the list is not exhaustive, — 
are attributable both to the author's desire for 
rhetorical display, greater than that of Helio- 
dorus; and to the equal looseness of his fabric, 
which will hold in its mesh as much of the for- 
tuitous, the unexpected and the immaterial as he 
may be tempted to insert. 73 

Irrelevancies of Characterization in Achilles 
Tatius have been discussed {ante, pp. 144-145). 
Their most frequent form, it has been observed, 
is the needless analysis of " psychological " com- 
monplace — another kind of show-piece. I cite 
again a few of the more striking instances: (II. 
xxix) Leucippe's state of mind under her moth- 
er's reproof. (III. xi) Excessive sorrow chokes 
the fountain of tears. (III. xiv) A tale of woe 
begets sympathy, and sympathy begets friend- 
ship. (V. xiii) The impression left by the image 
of the beloved. Love so fills the lover as to leave 
no room for food! (VI. xix) The workings of 
anger and desire. (VII. iv) Why tears do not 
follow immediately upon grievous news (cf. III. 
xi, supra). (I. vi) Why Clitophon could not 
sleep. ( VII. vii ) Sympathetic efTect of tears upon 
a spectator explained. 

Irrelevancies of Setting have also been dis- 

" Achilles Tatius is no more able than Heliodorus to 
refrain from " orations." Besides the six tirades in the 
two trial-scenes, already cited (VII. vii-xi ; VIII. viii-x), 
we have Clitophon's jingling answer to Leucippe's letter 
(V. xx), Melitta's set speech on Rumor and Calumny (VI. 
x), Charmides's reply to Menelaus (IV. xi), Leucippe's fine 
invective against Thersander and Sosthenes (VI. xxi-xxii), 
and Melitta's last impassioned plea to Clitophon (V. xxv- 
xxvi). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 207 

cussed (ante, pp. 165-6, 169-176) in their form 
of geographical and descriptive show-pieces. I re- 
capitulate these and other " pictures hors texte." 

(Li) The double harbor of Sidon. The paint- 
ing of Europa. (xii) Charicles's runaway horse. 
(xv) The Garden. 

(II. iii) The crystal wine-cup. (xi) The neck- 
lace and the purple robe, (xiv) Geographical 
marvels : the Sicilian spring, etc. (xv) The sump- 
tuous sacrifice. 

(III. i-iv) The storm, the shipwreck, the battle 
for the boats, (vii-viii) The statue of Zeus; the 
painting of Perseus and Andromeda; the paint- 
ing of Prometheus. 

(IV. xi-xiii) The Nile and the Herdsmen's 
islands (description mostly irrelevant — all that 
matters being the immediate surroundings of 
Nicochis). 

(V. i-ii) The City of Alexandria, (iii) The 
painting of Philomela, (vi) The Pharos. 

(VI. vii) Leucippe's tears. 

Irrelevant Science and Pseudo-Science. — Medr- 
icine: (IV. x) Diagnosis and details of treatment 
of Leucippe's illness. 

Acoustics and Music: (VIII. vi) Construction 
of Pan's pipes. 

Aesthetics: (II. xxxvi) The essence of pleas- 
ure is evanescence. 

Psychology: (VI. vi) The mind not invisible, 
because mirrored in the face. (And see Irrele- 
vancies of Characterization) . 

Strategy: (III. xiii) Strategic development of 
skirmish — heavy troops;, light troops, cavalry; 



208 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

(IV. xiii-xiv) The brigands' stratagem on the 
causeway at Nicochis. Both of these, like the 
similar passages in Heliodorus, are not so much 
irrelevant as over-expanded. 74 

Zoology: (III. xxv) The Phoenix; (IV. ii-iii) 
The Hippopotamus ; (iv-v) The Elephant ; (xix) 
The Crocodile; (I. xviii) The Viper and the 
Lamprey. 

Physics: (I. xvii) The magnet and the iron. 

Botany: (I. xvii) The Palm-tree and his mate. 

Here let there be recalled from Heliodorus 
" The stone Pantarbe," which possesses the virtue 
of protecting its wearer from fire (U 221, 223; 
VIII. ix, xi), and "the ^Ethiopian Amethyst," 
which " will not lette him be drunke in deede, that 
weareth him, but keepeth him sober at all feastes." 
(U 134; V. xiii) ; as well as "The bird Chara- 
drius" and "The serpent Basiliscus " (U 86-7; 
III. vii-viii) . For Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius 
possess in common a notable trait, which is of 
the coming world, the world that will produce 
" Bestiaries/' " Volucraries," " Lapidaries " — and 
Euphuism. Already these authors express a pe- 
culiar relation between the supposed phenomena 

T * Certainly they are so if we apply a standard furnished 
by Achilles Tatius himself at IV. xviii. There, in a single 
sentence, he tells us that " meanwhile," — 4v Toirry (i. e., 
while Leucippe was being cured) — quite incidentally, as it 
were, the robbers were exterminated, and the Nile ren- 
dered safe for travellers. He thus cavalierly dismisses a 
process the unsuccessful attempts at which have cost an 
army, and have extended in time over more than one eighth 
of his whole narrative (III. xiii; IV. xviii), a book and 
more. The fact seems to be that he is tired of campaign- 
ing, and would rather talk about something else. His brevity 
here is as disproportionate, as was his former detailed 
expansion. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 209 

of nature and the mental life of man, — employ- 
ing such phenomena not only by way of metaphor 
and simile — the storm as a figure of wrath, the 
fox as a proverb of cunning — but by way of ex- 
planation and argument. Calasiris suggests to 
Charicles that Chariclea, who has just fallen love- 
sick, has been fascinated by an evil eye. An 
envious eye, he says, fills the air with subtle 
venom which penetrates the victim's pores. There 
are analogies : persons are often infected by merely 
breathing the same air with a sick person; love 
enters the soul through the eye. " I will bring 
for examples sake some reason out of the holy 
bookes, gathered of the consideration of nature. 
Charadrius healeth those that have the Kinges 
evill [mistranslation: should be jaundice], which 
birde flieth away as soone as any that hath this 
disease hath spied her, and turneth her taile 
toward him, shutteth her eyes. Not as some say 
because she would not help him, but that in look- 
ing upon him, she draweth that evill disease unto 
her by nature, and therefore she declineth such 
sight as a present perill. And perhaps you have 
heard how the serpent Basiliscus, with his onelie 
breath and looke, doth drye up and corrupte all 
that it passeth by" (U 86-7; III. vii-viii). 75 

" Helicdorus almost certainly got this passage from Plu- 
tarch " Quaest. Conviv.," V. vii, 2 (Teubner, Vol. 4, p. 201), 
where the same virtue and habits are attributed to the 
Charadrius, the language is similar, and the context the 
same: viz. a discussion of "fascination," with the familiar 
phenomena of love and the habits of the Charadrius ad- 
duced as analogies. From Plutarch, too, the " Physiologus" 
in all probability got the basis for its account of Chara- 
drius: brought into the presence of any sick person, the 

15 



2IO THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Clitophon's citation of supposed natural phe- 
nomena is likewise argumentative: (I. xvii- 
xviii). 'The palm-tree languishes for his mate; 
the iron is drawn to the magnet by desire; the 
viper and the lamprey most strangely love ' : ergo 
— so runs the plain conclusion — ' do thou love me, 
Leucippe/ 

So far as irrelevancy is not just the unintended 
product of a careless unarchitectonic habit of 
mind, so far as it is adverted to and intentional 
at all, it rests upon a common basis with paradox. 
Both defeat expectation ; — the one by turning the 
expectant mind away from the continuation it 
looks for, and toward a continuation that is not 
essentially connected with what precedes; the 
other by the surprising nature of its own content. 
In both its phases, — irrelevancy and paradox — 
this element of the unexpected, prominent in the 
form as in the matter of the Greek Romances, 
deserves attention. To turn aside to the irrele- 
vant; to strain suspense by retarding the ex- 
pected outcome ; to introduce by the way — all un- 

bird foretells his recovery or his death according as it looks 
toward him or away from him. (Text of " Physiologus " 
in Lauchert, " Geschichte des Physiologus," p. 232.) If 
Lauchert is right (p. 42) in dating the " Physiologus " early 
in the second century A.D., it preceded Heliodorus. — 
Charadrius is a favorite of the Bestiaries. Philippe de 
Thaiin, Guillaume le Clerc, Hugues de St. Victor, the 
" Younger " German Physiologus, " Le Bestiaire d' Amour " 
of Richard de Fournival, and others, give an account of 
him substantially as in the " Physiologus." See Lauchert, 
op. cit.; Reinsch, ed. " Le Bestiaire — das Thierbuch des 
normannischen Dichters Guillaume le Clerc " ; Hippeau, ed. 
" Le Bestiaire d' Amour," text, and note p. 112 ff, which 
cites other authors. The passage in Heliodorus is not men- 
tioned by any of these writers, but is quoted by Elworthy, 
" The Evil Eye," p. 33. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 311 

looked for— as many bizarre, ironical, paradox- 
ical situations and dazzling phrases as possible; 
and finally to "spring" an issue which is itself 
a surprising combination of opposites — all these 
would seem to be consistent results of adopting 
the unexpected as the principle of the genre. We 
proceed, then, to the consideration of paradox 
( to TrapdSoZov—" the contrary-to-expectation " ) . 
That our writers seek it consciously is evident. 
They are continually speaking of their situations 
as " new and strange " ( Kawbs ) , " against rea- 
son" (irapaXoyos), " unthought of" (aSo/a?TO?), 
"against all expectation or hope" (irap 1 iXTrtSa 
iraaav or irapa e\7n6W), "sudden, impromptu" 
(aoToo-xe&o?), "unforeseen" ( aTroocxSo^TO? ) , 
"paradoxical" or "contrary to expectation" 
( irapa 86i;av and irapdBo^ ) . So of the fight be- 
tween mariners and their own passengers— " a 
new sort of sea-fight" ("A. T.," III. hi); the 
sudden marriage of Cnemon to the daughter of 
Nausicles ("^th.," VI. viii) ; Leucippe's several 
marvellous escapes ("A. T.," VII. xiii) ; Daph- 
nis's escape from pirates and shipwreck ("D. & 
C," I. xxxi) ; the surprising war and the equally 
surprising peace between Methymne and Mytilene 
("D. & C," III. iii) ; the kiss Daphnis got from 
Chloe— the result of his lucky admission to the 
house of Dryas (" D. & C," III. viii) ; the unex- 
pected end of the projected marriage between 
Clitophon and Calligone (" A. T.," I. xviii). Nor 
do the Romancers ignore the part played by For- 
tune in bringing about such situations. Accord- 
ing to Oroondates (" Aeth.," IX. xxi), it is lucky 



312 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

opportunity (/eat/>o?) which enables a soldier to 
perform fi^ya ti • • • kcl\ irapdho^ov. The pirates 
(V. xxix) bring from their ship rich tables, ves- 
sels, and fabrics ; " wealth which others had gath- 
ered by dint of care and sparing, but which was 
now unsparingly and uncaringly set forth, For- 
tune delivering it to the insolences of a drinking- 
bout." And when the antitheses of this same 
situation issue in the further paradox of a feast 
turning into a fight (I. i), why then it is 6 Saificov 
(no need to ask which divinity) who "shewed a 
wonderful sight in so shorte time, bruing bloude 
with wine, joyning battaile with banketting, min- 
gling indifferently slaughters with drinkings, and 
killings with quaffings " (U 10). Clitophon, hear- 
ing that he has the consent of Leucippe's father 
to marry her, " cried out upon Fortune's caprice. 
. . . After death, marriage; after the dirge, the 
nuptial hymn! And what a bride does Fortune 
grant me! One whose corpse she has not even 
granted me entire!" ("A. T.," V. xi). Some 
other paradoxes and antitheses not expressly at- 
tributed to Fortune may be enumerated. When 
Thyamis assists Theagenes and Chariclea, "surely 
this deed was not without much glorie, for hee, 
who was their maister waited upon them, and he 
who tooke them prisoners, was content to serve 
them" (U 13-14). Sisimithres shows Charicles 
the jewels belonging to Chariclea. Upon Chari- 
cles's declining to buy them because he is not rich 
enough, "Why saide he [Sisimithres], if you be 
not able to buy them yet are you able to take them 
if they be given you. . . . I will give you all these 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 21 3 

things, if you will take them, beside another gifte, 
which farre excelleth them all " — viz., Chariclea 
herself (U 70-71). Near the end, Hydaspes ad- 
dresses Chariclea as " My daughter . . . whose 
beautie is peerless to no purpose, and hast found 
thy parents in vaine, which hast in an ill time 
hapned upon thine owne countrey, worse to thee 
then any strange lande, who hast bene safe in 
other countreyes, but art in danger of death in 
thine owne" (U 272-3). Chariclea's own para- 
doxes and self-contradictions in this scene (X. 
xxii) have been quoted (ante, p. 140 q. v.) ; and 
at the close (X. xxxviii), the gods, it is said, 
"made very contrarye things agree, and joyned 
sorrow and mirth, teares and laughter together, 
and turned fearefull and terrible things into a 
joyfull banquette in the ende. Many that weapt 
beganne to laugh, and such as were sorrowfull to 
rejoice, when they founde that they sought not 
for, and lost that they hoped to finde ; and to be 
shorte, the cruell slaughters which were looked 
for every momente, were turned into holy sacri- 
fice" (U288). — A paradoxical antithetical ending 
which is, deliberately, one feels, set over against 
the paradoxical antithetical beginning : in the one, 
feasting turned into slaughter; in the other, 
slaughter turned into feasting. 

A special case of paradox is what may, very 
broadly, be termed Irony. The unexpected ful- 
filment of an oracle or a dream, the bringing 
about of an event by the very means taken to 
prevent it, the prevention or cure of one evil by 
another, the turning of an apparent evil into a 



214 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

blessing, or the reverse, these and other such 
contrasts possess an intenser, a more concentrated 
flavor, as it were, than the cases just noticed. An 
event the occurrence of which has merely not 
been expected, is less piquant than an event which 
has actively been designed not to occur. When 
Thyamis dreams that Isis gives him Chariclea 
with the words " Though you have her, you shall 
not have her; though you kill your guest, you 
shall not kill her," — he interprets the dream (it- 
self paradoxical enough) in a way to suit his 
hopes. Then, by his own action in concealing 
Chariclea in the cave for safety, and in stabbing 
Thisbe supposing her to be Chariclea, he fulfils 
the dark saying (I. xviii, xxviii-xxxi) , 76 The sor- 
ceress on the battle-field at Bessa, in her attempt 
to frustrate her dead son's prediction by killing 
the witnesses of her necromancy, is herself killed, 
and so accomplishes the prediction (VI. xv). 78 
Taken by the Ethiopians, Theagenes and Chari- 
clea are escorted " in captive guise, by those 
destined ere long to be their subjects " (B. 204, 
VIII. xvii). Shortly after, their captors "fitted 
for them fetters of gold. Theagenes laughed 
and said : Good lorde, whence commeth this trim 
chaunge? Truely, fortune flattereth us wonder- 
fully, we chaunge yron for gold, and in prison 
we are inriched, so that wee bee worth more 
in our bandes " (IX. ii ; U 234) — a speech iron- 
ical in the ordinary sense, and aware, too, of the 
agency of Fortune in bringing about ironical 

M These are cases of " dramatic irony " (cf. e. g., the 
plot of the "Oedipus Tyrannus"), and may be credited to 
the influence of tragedy upon Heliodorus. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 215 

situations. In the great scene of reunion under 
the walls of Memphis (VIII. vii) it has already 
been observed (ante, p. 188) how the very course 
which Calasiris took to frustrate the oracle — viz., 
his retirement to Delphi — brought him in contact 
with the fortunes of Theagenes and Chariclea, 
which in turn took him back to Memphis at the 
appointed time. 77 The happy ending comes about 
most ironically of all. In order that Theagenes 
may be saved from the sacrifice, the fact that he 
is Chariclea's husband must be revealed, and the 
priest Charicles does reveal it ; but his disclosure 
takes the form of the capital charge that The- 
agenes has violated the altar of Apollo by ab- 
ducting Chariclea! Thus the fact which saves 
Theagenes appears in a form which threatens 
to ruin him (X. xxxvi-xxxvii). — In Longus 
there is very little irony, — in fact, very little place 
for it. The episode of the Methymnaeans, which 
at first leads to the beating of Daphnis and the 
abduction of Chloe (II. xiv, xx), afterward helps 
to bring about the young people's happiness; as 
the money lost by the Methymnaeans enables 
Daphnis to sue successfully for Chloe's hand 
(III. xxvii-xxxii). Megacles suffers "the irony 
of Fate " in that, as he says, " Wealth began to 
pour in upon me when I had no heir to enjoy 
it ; " moreover, the paradox of his dreams is unex- 
pectedly fulfilled : " as if wishing to make a mock 
of me, the gods are continually sending dreams 
by night, signifying, forsooth, that a ewe will 
make me a father" (B 345; IV. xxxv) — In 

77 See p. 214 n. 76. 



2l6 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

" Clitophon and Leucippe " irony appears often, 
but on rather a small scale: there is no large 
grasp of events extending over broad times and 
spaces, — like that which, in the "^Ethiopica," 
brings Calasiris to Memphis, or balances the end 
of the story against the beginning. Achilles 
Tatius puts closer together the expectation and its 
defeat. The event portended by the eagle (II. 
xiii) — i. e., the abduction of the bride — takes 
place at the sacrifice intended to avert it (II. 
xviii). Whereas Panthea's dream (II. xxiii) 
imported the actual disembowelment of Leucippe, 
and by robbers, the event is in fact only an ap- 
parent disembowelment, which is performed by 
friends, and is the means of delivering her from 
the robbers (III. xv, xx-xxii). In the same 
way, her apparent decapitation, really the de- 
capitation of another woman, leads to the quarrel 
between Chaereas and the pirates, which issues 
in the murder of Chaereas, and in Leucippe's 
escape from him (V. vii; VIII. xvi). Her 
mental derangement is another blessing in dis- 
guise, in that it effectually prevents the prosecu- 
tion of Charmides's designs against her (IV. 
ixff.). 

There are a few instances of verbal irony. 
Satyrus remarks, in relating how Clitophon has 
declined Melitta's offers (V. xi), "I suppose he 
thinks Leucippe will come to life again," — which 
is virtually what does happen (V. xvii). When 
Sosthenes tells Leucippe that all is going well — 
that Thersander is madly in love with her and 
may possibly even marry her — , the irony of her 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 217 

reply " May the gods requite you with equal 
joy ! " seems to be quite lost upon him (VI. xi- 
xii). Exceedingly bizarre, whether in any 
proper sense ironical or not, is the situation where 
Clitophon is tried, and upon his own confession 
is condemned, for the murder of a person whom 
he loves, who is alive all the time, and who dur- 
ing part of the time is actually present in court 
(VII. vi-xiii; VIII. ix). 

Certain special situations containing the ma- 
terials for antithesis and paradox are of such 
frequent occurrence in the Greek Romances as to 
deserve particular mention. Of these, one is the 
contrast between marriage and death. Chari- 
cles' daughter died on her wedding-night: "The 
marriage Song, not yet ended, was turned to 
mourning ; and she was carried out of her Bride- 
bedde into her grave: and the tapers that gave 
her light at her wedding, did now serve to kindle 
her funerall fire" 78 (U 69-70; II. xxix). Hy- 
daspes uses almost the same words to Chariclea: 
" follow thy father, who cannot provide a mar- 
riage for thee, nor bring thee to bedde in any 
costlie bowers, but make thee ready for sacrifice, 
and beare before thee, not such tapers as are 
used at bridalles, but appointed for sacrifice" 
(U 272-3, X. xvi). Chariclea on the pyre is 
said to lie like a bride upon a fiery bed (VIII. 
ix). To Thyamis, Chariclea dissemblingly says: 
" We have good cause ... to accompt ourselves 
happy, because some God hath brought us into 
your hands, where those who feared death, have 

T8 Cf. " Romeo and Juliet," IV. v, particularly the speeches 
of Capulet ; and see Sophocles, " Antigone," passim. 



2l8 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

now space to thinke on marriage" (U 32; I. 
xxii). In " Clitophon and Leucippe," the father 
of the dead youth Charicles laments over his 
son's body: "When, my son, will you wed? 
when shall I make your nuptial sacrifice, o luck- 
less bridegroom ? The grave is your bridal bed, 
death your marriage, mourning your shout of 
Hymen, and this dirge your nuptial hymn. . . . 
O fatal torches, not of marriage, but of the 
tomb!" (A. T., I. xiii). This gives the imagery 
complete, with the antitheses presented by the 
situation all fully developed ; so that it will suffice 
merely to list the four other similar passages. 
Apostrophizing Leucippe, who has been captured 
by robbers, Clitophon cries, 'Aim S'vfievafop rts 
croi rbv dprjvov ahet (III. x). Andromeda in the 
picture, exposed to her death, is " robed like a 
bride" (VIII. vii). Clitophon's lament for Leu- 
cippe when he receives word that her father con- 
sents to their marriage, has been quoted (ante, 
p. 212; V. xi: Mera Odvarov yd/JLOL, /jLeraOpijvov 
vfievaioi kt\.). The same contrast forms the 
basis of Melitta's jest-in-earnest, Kevord^iov fih 
yap elSov, KevoydfiLOv B'ov (V. xiv). 

A second stock rhetorical antithesis is found in 
the contrast, under various aspects and circum- 
stances, of land and water. 79 Gorgias, who in- 

" In the form, " a sea-fight on land and a land-battle at 
sea," this antithesis was one of the traditional purple patches 
of Greek and Roman rhetoric. Norden, " Antike Kunst- 
prosa," pp. 385, 437, gives its history, beginning with 
Gorgias, and citing no less than thirteen imitators, among 
whom " endlich hat Himerios eine wahrhaft diabolische 
Freude daran " ! Akin to it is the combination of water 
with fire in the Sicilian spring (A. T., II. xiv). " Un autre 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 219 

vented it, applied it to Xerxes' battle with the 
Greeks. In the "iEthiopica," the Nile having been 
admitted to the moat around Syene, "thus was 
Syene made an Island, and a citie which standeth 
in the middest of a country, was compassed about 
with water, and beaten upon soare with the waves 
of Nylus. . . . Truely this was a strange sight, 
that a shippe should sayle from wall to wall, and a 
Marryner shoulde practice his skill in the middest 
of the drye lande, and a boate be rowed where 
the plowe was woont to worke. And although 
the toile of warre ever deviseth new thinges, yet 
then invented it the straungest thing, when it 
made those that were in ships, fight with them 
that stoode upon the walks, and joyned two 
armies by sea and land together" (U 236-7; IX. 
iv-v). The corresponding passage in Achilles 
Tatius, describing the Nile in flood, is enorm- 
ously elaborated, following into detail the con- 
trast between nautical operations and utensils on 
the one hand, and agricultural operations and 
utensils on the other. It bristles with antitheses 
(A. T. IV. xii). So of the situation of Tyre 
on an island reached by a causeway: "Strange 
sight — a city at sea and an island ashore" (II. 
xiv). Again, the peculiar circumstances of the 

de nos Poetes, repliqua Philanthe, dit, en faisant la descrip- 
tion d'un naufrage cause par l'embrasement du navire : 
' Soldats & matelots roules confinement, Par un double 
malheur perissent doublement; L'un se brule dans l'onde, 
au feu l'autre se noye, Et tout en meme temps dedeux 
morts sont la proye.'— Ce vers, ' L'un se brule dans l'onde, 
au feu l'autre se noye,' ressemble assez au votre, ' Doute si 
l'oiseau nage, ou si le poisson vole.' " Bouhours, " La 
Maniere de Bien Penser dans les Ouvrages d'Esprit." 3me 
Dialogue, pp. 346-7 (Paris, 1695)- 



220 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

battle with the Herdsmen brought about " a new 
sort of disaster — a shipwreck but nowhere a ship. 
Both these events were new and unthinkable : a 
land-battle in the water, and a shipwreck on the 
land!" (IV. xiv). 

The third of these tricks of rhetoric, charge- 
able, like the second, to Gorgias, is the bold 
metaphor that is famous because Longinus con- 
demned it (De Subl., III. 2) : "Vultures, — living 
tombs" (Tv7re<; efjLyjrv^oi, ra<j>oi). This would 
naturally come to be applied to any living thing 
that had devoured another. Thus, in Ovid Met., 
VI. 445, Tereus calls himself the tomb of his 
son Itys. 80 Achilles Tatius (III. v) makes 
Clitophon, as he floats on the wreckage with Leu- 
cippe, pray to Poseidon: 'Let one wave over- 
whelm us, or one fish swallow us both, and be 
our common tomb.' Again (III. xvi) Clitophon 
laments Leucippe's entrails, which he supposes 
to have been eaten by the robbers: 97 r&v 
a7r\dyxvc0v crov racfyrj Xrjarcov yeyove rpocf>r) — a 
conceit all the more disgusting because gratui- 
tous. 

It is evident that we have here entered the 

80 Cited by Norden, op. cit., 385, with numerous other 
occurrences of the metaphor. In the " Gerusalemme Libe- 
rata " (XII. 78-79), Tancred about to return to Clorinda's 
corpse fancies that it may have been devoured by a wild 
beast : if so, he wishes that he may be devoured by the 
same, and rest with her in one tomb ! Bouhours, op. cit., 
3me Dialogue, p. 393, discusses this and other conceits. 
The vitality of Gorgias's metaphor is illustrated by a whim- 
sical story in McClure's Magazine for March, 1909, " Bibi 
Steinfeld's Hunting," p. 480 ff: a widow whose husband 
has been eaten by a lion captures the animal, keeps him 
alive, and places about his neck a collar inscribed with an 
epitaph which ends " Ruhe Sanft." 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 221 

province of wholly artificial rhetoric. Together 
with circumstances or events which by their 
nature afford the material of the unexpected, — a 
contrast, a bit of irony, an antithesis, a sur- 
prise — , we now find events and circumstances 
which, commonplace in themselves, are by arti- 
fice analysed into antithetical elements, and 
forced to yield up a conceit. Such is the situa- 
tion of Tyre — a city on an island connected with 
the mainland by a causeway. What of it? 
Nothing; — except to a mind already infected by 
Gorgias's conceit of 'Land versus Water,' and 
desirous of emulating it. But that mind quickly 
cuts in two the single concept of the situation of 
Tyre, and then sets over against each other the 
results of the dichotomy. We turn to a brief 
consideration of such artifices, employed where 
material for the unexpected is giving out, and 
the conceit has become largely verbal. 

Two chief types have already been exemplified. 
In the one, which may be called " Oxymoron," 
X and Y, being opposite, or at least disconnected, 
in fact or in their associations (like land and 
water, or death and marriage), are combined. 
In the other, which may be called " Antithesis " 
proper, X and Y are set over against each other, 
and kept apart. The two types, though distinct 
enough at their centres, merge at their edges. 
Where, for instance, X a noun is modified by Y 
an adjective, the resulting concept, though self- 
contradictory, is single: this is a clear case of 
Oxymoron (e. g., the " freezing flame," "burn- 
ing ice," "sweet pain," and "grievous joy" of 



232 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

the Petrarchists). Where X and Y are in sepa- 
rate sentences or clauses, or where, in the same 
sentence or clause, they are avowedly contrasted, 
the case is an equally clear one of Antithesis {e. 
g., "the marriage Song . . . was turned to 
mourning" ante, p. 217). On the border line, — 
as where X in a phrase modifies a clause which 
ends in Y — occur numerous cases which may 
plausibly be classified either way. The device 
itself being largely verbal, these syntactical dis- 
tinctions are not so unimportant as they may 
seem. That they are, in fact, essential, will ap- 
pear when to the trick of Antithesis and Oxy- 
moron we find the rhetorician adding Balance in 
grammatical structure. The following cases, 81 
then, are arranged, roughly, according to the in- 
creasing syntactical and logical separation of 
X and Y. 

(1) X noun modified by Y adjective. 

A. T., V. i. In Alexandria there is an evSrjfios 
airoh-qfiia — a stay-at-home migration; (either be- 
cause of the great population, which would con- 
stitute as it were an intramural Volkerwanderung, 
or because of the great size of the city, which 

81 Nearly all from Achilles Tatius, who very fully exem- 
plifies this estilo alto. The passages given here, which were 
gathered independently, are abundantly confirmed by those 
quoted and referred to in Norden, op. cit., 434-442. Nor- 
den also corroborates my opinion that Heliodorus is less 
artificial in style than either Longus or Achilles Tatius 
(" Heliodorus ist ausser Xenophon v. Ephesos am spar- 
samsten mit seinen Kunstmitteln." lb., 439 s , and cf. 43s 2 ) ; 
and his quotations and citations from " Daphnis and Chloe " 
exhibiting the same rhetorical devices make it needless for 
me to extend the present discussion specifically to Longus. 
Achilles Tatius may serve as the type of the rhetorician- 
romancer. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 223 

would allow of a journey abroad, as it were, 
though the traveller remained at home.) 

A. T., II. ii. "What is this purple water f 
Where did you get this sweet blood?" 

A. T., III. vii. The painter has adorned An- 
dromeda €V/JLOp(j)0) <f)6f3(p. 

A. T., IV. xii. The flooded banks of the Nile 
become, so to speak, an arable sea — jre'Xayos yecop- 
yovfxevov. 

(2) X noun subject of Y verb. 

A. T., VI. vii. When a beautiful eye weeps, 
the tears smile, (tc\ Be Bdicpva • • • jeXcf.) 

A. T., II. vii. Leucippe must carry a bee upon 
her lips : full of honey, her kisses sting: Tirpaxr/cei 
gov ra (fnX^/jLara. 

A. T., II. xxxiv. Menelaus at the death of his 
favorite feels o>? av aWos tis airoddvot %cov. 

(3) X verb modified by Y adverb, or its 
equivalent. 

A. T., V. xiv. Melitta jested in earnest — eirai^e 

GTTOvBrj. 

A. T., V. xx. Clitophon's answer to Leu- 
cippe's letter: I am unhappy in my happiness: 
Ayo-TV^a) fxev ev oh evrvxa). 

A. T., II. xxiv. Panthea to Leucippe : aBo^eh 

ev oh SvO~TV)(€h. 

(4) X verb takes object Y noun. 

y£th., VI. viii; U 162-3. " Lette us singe 
teares . . . and daunce lamentations" : aaco- 
(lev • • • Oprjvovs /cal 70'ov? virop^awixeda. 

A. T., III. x. tjSt] tov Bpr\vov l^op^(r]Cfop.ai. 
ibid. /j,e/jL(j)o/jLa{ o~ov tt) (f>c\av0p(O7ria. 

A. T., IV. ix. " We fear even good heck " : 
(f>o/3ovfA€0 a teal rd evrvxv^ aTa - 



224 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

(5) X and Y adjectives both modify the same 
noun. 

A. T., V. xx. " I see you present as if ab- 
sent " : (T€ • • • TTCLpOVGCLV ft)? ctTToSij/jiovaav opco. 

(6) X (noun) is said to be the Y (noun) of 
x (noun closely associated with X — e. g., the 
genus of which X is a species, the material of 
which X is made, etc.). 

A. T., II. i. The rose is the eye of flowers — 
odjOaXfjuos avOecov, 82 and the blush of the meadow 
— Xeifi&vos ipvdrjfjia. 62 

A. T., I. xv. The peacock's tail shows flowers 
of feathers — avOrj 82 irrep&v. 

(7) X and Y verbs have the same subject or 
object. 

A. T., V. iii. Philomela and Procne in the pic- 
ture simultaneously laugh and fear: <ye\<aai B y 

CLjJLCL fCCll djoftoVVTdL. 

A. T., III. x. 77/-KX? Be aaxrao-a fxaWov aireic- 
reivas. 

82 " Je ne vous parle pas du Cavalier Marin, . . . qui 
appelle la rose Vail du print emps la prunelle de I 'Amour, 
la pourpre des prairies, la fleur des autre s fleurs ; le ros- 
signol, une voix emplumee, un son volant, une plume har- 
monieuse ; les etoiles. les lampes d'or du firmament, les 
flambeaux des funerailles du jour, ... les fleurs immor- 
telles des campagnes celestes. (Quotes the phrases in Italian, 
but without giving references to the passages in Marino. 
Italics mine.) . . . Selon votre gout, ajouta-t-il (viz., 
Eudoxe to Philanthe), c'est quelque chose de fort beau 
que ce qu'on a dit d'une belle chanson, que c'est un air qui 
vole avec des ailes de miel ; de la queue du Paon, que 
c'est une prairie de plumes; and de l'Arc-en-ciel, que c'est 
le ris du ciel qui pleure, un arc sans fleches, ou qui n'a que 
de traits de lumiere, & qui ne frappe que les yeux. — Ah que 
cela est joli, s'ecria Philanthe ! " — Bouhours, op. cit., 3me 
Dialogue, pp. 353-4, 355- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 225 

A. T., II. xxii. The gnat speaks: 'E7o> Be 
wapcov ov Trdpet/JLL ' 6/jlov Be Kai (f>evy(o Kai, /xevco. 

(8) X and Y nouns both predicates of one sub- 
stantive verb. 

A. T., II. xxii. The gnat again : (toXttl^ Be 
/Mot Kai /3e\o? to <ri6\xa • war eifil Kai au\??T7/5 icai 
TofoV?;?. 'Efxavrov B , otoTO? Kai to^ov yivo\iai. 

(9) X subject and Y object of same verb. 

2EAh., II. iv. Theagenes laments the sup- 
posed corpse of Chariclea : otfioi, o-t&>7ra?, Kai to 
\1avTiK0v eicelvo Kai derjyopov crropba aiyr) /caTe^et, 
Kai ^6cf)o<; T7)V irvpfyopov KareiX^ev. ' Silence pos- 
sesses that prophetic mouth; and darkness has 
seized her that bore the flame'). 

(10) X in a phrase modifies a clause contain- 
ing Y. 

Mth., V. xxiv; U 143-4- At the approach of 
the pirates, "all the hulke was moved . . . and 
in a calme weather had it a great tempest" : ev re 
yaXrjvrj kXvBoovos everr\r](TTO. 

Ibid. xxv. U 145. After the encounter be- 
tween the pirates and the crew, there followed 
77-o'Ae/AO? epyois 6 ^a\e7roSraTO?, elprjvr)? ovofxan 
v66u> TrapaXvofievos, avvdrjKrjs fiapvTepas nr\eov rj 
T rJ9 fidxns opi&fievr)? : " for all the counterfeited 
name of peace, it was cruell warre in deed, by 
reason of the truce . . . more intolerable than 
the battaile it selfe." 

A. T., I. xiv. Clinias to the horse of Chari- 
cles : ' In the very act of being praised, you killed 
him ' : <rv B 1 aTreKieiva^ eiraivovnevos. 

y£th., I. xxix. Cnemon concealing Chariclea 
in the cave, weeps ' because he has delivered over 
16 



236 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

to night and darkness that most radiant thing 
among men — Chariclea ' : on • • • to (fraiSpoTciTOP 
to)v ev av0pa)7TOL<; lHapUXeiap vvktI ko\ £b'(£a> 
7rapaBe8c0/cco$. 

(n) X noun receives attribute of Y noun, and 
Y receives attribute of X. 

A. T., II. xiv. A city at sea and an island 
ashore. 

A. T., IV. xiv. A land-battle in the water and 
a shipwreck on the land. 

(12) X in sub-clause modifies main clause con- 
taining Y. 

A. T., IV. ix. *£2 oWrir^et? rj/xek otclp evTvyj]- 

A. T., II. xxxvi. ocrov cXcittovtcu [sc. rj r)8ovrj~\ 
to) xpovw, toctovtov ek fieyeOos ifcreiverai iroOco. 

A. T., IV. xii. *0 TreirXev/cas, (frvTeveis, real 6 
(frvTevets, tovto ireXayos yecopyov/jiepop. " Where 
you have sailed, you sow ; and where you sow is 
an arable sea." 

(13) X and Y in co-ordinate clauses or sen- 
tences. 

A. T., I. xv. iyivero ra> klttcd o^r^ia to (J>vt6p, 

ffT€$aPO$ 8' KLTTOS TOV (f)VTOV. 

A .T., II. xxxvii. 'HpdaOr] (sc. 6 Zei>?) fieipa- 
tciov <J>0vyo9, avtfyayev ek ovpavbv top <&pvya • to 
Be /caXXos t5>v yvvaitcwv civtop top Aia tcaTrjyayep 
ef ovpapov. 

A. T., III. vi. eoixe to Oe'a/jLa [the picture of 
Andromeda], el pep ek to tcdWo? aTrlBois, aydX- 
fiaTL Kaipfv, el 8* ek tcl Bea/xa teal to /o)to?, avTO- 
o-^eoY&> Ta^xp. 

7Eth. } IV. viii; U 108. (End of Persina's in- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 227 

scription upon Chariclea's fillet). "That I have 
written, if thou live, shall be token* to thee (my 
daughter in vaine beautifull, which by thy beauty 
procured my blame) of thy birth. But if thou 
die . . . they shall serve to bury thee": el fiev 
Trepcawdrje^, yvcopLo-fiara' el 8', oirep Kal aKorjv 
\ddoi ttjv ifJLrjv, eiriTV^Bia. 

A. T., V. viii. Clitophon over the headless 
trunk supposed to be Leucippe's : " In the guise 
of thy greater part (i. e., the trunk), there is left 
to me thy smaller part ; but the sea, in the little it 
possesses (i. e., the head), has thee all." MiKpbv 
fioi aov fxepos KaTaXeXeiirrai ev ofec rod p.el^ovo<s ' 
avjt) [sc. 17 daXaaaa] V ev 0X170) to ttuv aov 

Kparel. 

(14) X and Y expressly compared (includes 

last example in 13). »>*,*> 

A. T., I. xv. 'AvreXafiwe 5' rj rcov avdeav Vea 

TT) twv opvidav XP oi <?" . . . , 

' D. & C, I. xxxii. Chloe's bath, which had re- 
doubled her charms, seemed to Daphnis more 
formidable than the ocean, from which he had 
just escaped : eSofcet, to \ovrpbv elvai irfi 0a\atr<rrfi 
<f)o(3ep<*>Tepov. 

A. T., V. xiii. Uolov ycLp oyfrov fxoi iroKmekei 

7) TTOtO? OW Ti/UOJTCOO? 7TJ9 0"r}? 0^60)?. 

(15) X and Y once fairly apart, several other 
tricks of antithesis can be brought into play, and 
of these Achilles Tatius avails himself to the full. 
It is, for example, a mannerism of his to say that 
X and Y (persons, things, feelings) rivalled each 
other, neither gaining the victory. So of Alex- 
andria (V. i) : its population vies with its size, 



228 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

its size rivals its beauty, and its beauty rivals the 
beauty of the sky. Clinias and the father of 
Charicles vie with each other in grief (I. xiv) ; 
Leucippe's beauty rivals that of the garden (I. 
xix) ; the flowers rival the peacock's plumes (I. 
xv) ; the odors of incense and of flowers contend 
(II. xv ). Land and water struggle for the pos- 
session of Tyre (II. xiv) and of Egypt (IV. xii). 
The hindfeet of Charicles's horse (I. xii) strive 
to overtake the forefeet, in a iroh&v a/uW.77! 

(16) Conflicting Emotions. — Another trick of 
the same author is to attribute conflicting traits 
or emotions to his personages whenever possible. 
Andromeda in the picture shows beauty and fear ; 
Prometheus both hopes and fears (III. vii, viii) ; 
Philomela and Procne laugh and fear (V. iii). 
Thersander vacillates between desire and rage 
(VI. xix) and between grief, anger, and delibera- 
tion (VII. i). Clitophon (V. xix) reads Leu- 
cippe's letter, and Melitta (V. xxiv) picks up 
and reads the same letter, — each with conflicting 
emotions. At II. xxiii and at VI. xiv, there is 
a repetition of almost the same words, which 
show plainly how this mannerism is made to yield 
an antithesis. In the first passage, Clitophon 
enters Leucippe's chamber, "trembling with 
double trepidation, of joy and of fear. For the 
fear of danger confounded my soul's hope, and 
hope of success hid my fear in pleasure. Thus 
the hoping part of me was afraid, and the griev- 
ing part rejoiced." The other passage, concern- 
ing Clitophon in prison, is even neater : " My soul 
was in the balance between hope and fear, and 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 229 

the hoping part feared and the fearing part 
hoped " : rrjv yjrvxrjv e^op iirl Tpvrdvr)? iXirtSos 
Koi <f>6/3ov, Kal i(j}oj3elT6 yuot to eXiri^ov /cal rjXin^e 
to <f>o^Qv^evov. 

(17) Multiple Antithesis. — Again, as X and Y 
separate more and more, it becomes possible to 
work a double or even triple antithesis, as in the 
passages just given, — the formula for which 
would be something like this: X and Y con- 
fronted (one clause) ; X vs. Y (one clause) ; Y 
vs. X (one clause) ; all together forming three 
co-ordinate clauses, each of which contains X set 
over against Y, while the second and the third 
clauses are in addition set over against each other. 
Further examples of this antithesis between anti- 
theses are given above. (See (9), (10), (11), 
(12), (13).) Among the dangers of this striving 
after effect may be noted that sometimes, when 
two things are not opposed at all, the rhetorician 
nevertheless opposes them for the sake of the 
jingle. "The trunk was a support to the ivy, 
and the ivy was a garland to the trunk." (A. T., 
I. xv. quoted at (13) above). Neither the couple 
"trunk" and "ivy," nor the couple "support" 
and " garland," is antithetical in the least. 

(18) Balance; Parallel Structure. — It is 
notable too that when X and Y are held apart in 
separate phrases, clauses, or sentences, the oppor- 
tunities for balance increase. The narrow limits 
of a single phrase or clause usually permit only 
the single occurrence of a group of sentence-ele- 
ments : — preposition + object ; conjunction + sub- 
ject + verb -f- adverb; and the like. But when 



23O THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

two or more such groups are set parallel, the 
structure of each may find its double in the struc- 
ture of the others; and any antithesis within or 
between them is by such duplication rendered the 
more striking. For convenient reference I quote 
again, along with other examples, some passages 
already given. 

A. T., Ill vii (Painting of Andromeda) : eouce 
to Oeocfxa 

/el /JLev €6? to /ca\\o5 air lBols, ayaXfiaTL fcaivq) f 
\el & ek ra Beo-fia Kal to ktjto<;, avroa^eBiay Tacfxp. 

A. T., II. xxxvii. 'H/oao-077 [sc. 6 Zet>?] 

fieipa/ciov Qpvybs, avrjyayev €65 ovpavov tov 

<&pvya f to Be kciXXos tcov yvvaiKcov avTov tov Aia 

KaTr\yayev e'f ovpavov. 83 

A ^ , , , /to) kittg> oyrifJLa to 6vtov, 

A. T., I. XV. €76I/€TO< * ,, * V7 

'. \o-Tecpavos kittos tov 

<f)VTOV. 

» /> *> /V t&v avdecov 64a 

avTeXaiiTre o< « « » , n 

\ttj T(OV opviucov XP 0La ' 

A. T., II. xxxvi. 

r* f X \-i/o<rov eXaTTOVTai T<£> xpovco 

IV v ^1\to(7ovtov €65 fieyeOos 

eKTeiveTai iroOa). 

A. T., VI. xiv. rrjv yjrv^rjv elyov eirl TpVTavr)? 

w ,* v , , a /Kal i6o8elTO llol to eXiri^ov 

CA/7T6005 /Cat, (pOpOV/ \ *Z * ^ JL D > 

T '\fcai 7]Xin^e to (popovfievov. 
A. T., II. xxiii. €*7o> B' elarjeiv, • ■ • Tpe'/xoyv Tpo- 
fj.ov BlttXovv, %aoa5 d\xa Kal (f>6/3ov • 

/o /jlcv yap tov tavBvvov (f>6/3os eOopvftei Ta5 Tr)<; 
\ "r* v XW eA.7T6 / 8a5, 

\rj 8' €'A.7T65 toO tvxuv eireKaXvirTeiv rjBovrj TOV 
<j)6{3ov. 

a " He raised a mortal to the skies, 
She drew an angel duwn." 



A. T.,V. xxv. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION *3« 

, /koX to ikirgov t c£o/3etTo' pov 

A. T., VIII. viii. 
"Orav pev <yap , , , v 

/<j>ovev<o<n rote oXXot/h'ow oMerat ot /W'X 01 

XaotYe^roT^lxXoTpfa? yvvalKM oifw. 
('When debauchees murder other people's slaves 
and murderers debauch other people's wives, etc. ) 

Hicrovnevr) rbv /itcrovvra <f>t\<a 

Kal _ A _ 

o8vva>iievT) rbv 6Bvv&vra i\eS> 

('Hated, I love my hater; tortured, I pity my 

tOT (Tg e )Homeophonf l (Repetition, Assonance, 
Alliteration, Rhyme) . As a final touch, the rheto- 
rician adds to similarity of construction similarity 
of sound--" homeophony." This may consist 
merely in repetition of words in the : sarm = or n 
inflected or derivative forms In (18) there are 
several examples, exhibiting ingenious mterweav 
ng of the homeophonic words with the words 
corresponding in construction Or the homeo- 
phony may take the form of assonance (simi- 
larity in vowels), alliteration (similarity in con- 
sonants), or rhyme (homoioteleuton, similarity 

in an inflected language, grammat.cal parallehsm often car 
rie» with it similar terminations. 



232 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

in terminal vowels and consonants both 85 ). In 
the following examples it will be noticed that 
homeophony is not confined to those grammatical 
constructions which separate X and Y, but occurs 
in Oxymoron as well as in Antithesis; and that 
throughout, particularly in antithesis, the ten- 
dency is to make the corresponding words (X 
and Y) homeophonic. 86 

A.T.,V.xiv. Kevordcfyiov fxev yap elSov, fcevoyd- 
fuov S' ov (part-repetition of word ; assonance, cor- 
respondence). 

V. xx. Avcttvxg) fjbh iv oh evrvxw (part-repeti- 
tion; rhyme; correspondence) OTi ere irapcov ira- 
povo-av o>5 airoBrj/jLovaav opco ( rhyme ; correspon- 
dence). 

V. xviii. Holov yap oyfrov /jlol 7ro\uTeXe? rj 7roto<? 
oho? TL/M(i)T€po<; t?}? o-rj<; o^eco? ; (alliteration ; cor- 

88 From the frequency of these figures of balance it must 
not be inferred that the style of the Greek Romances is 
uniformly or even prevalently periodic. Short word-groups 
of the same rank balance as readily as longer combinations 
of sentence-members of different ranks. In fact, much of 
the body of the narrative — excluding £i«pp&aret.s, letters, " ora- 
tions " and other passages in heightened style — is kept arti- 
ficially simple (a<pe\te ) — often in an attempt to imitate the 
naive paratactic structure of archaic prose. A. T., I. i : 
" Sidon is a city on the sea ; the sea is that of the Assyrians ; 
the city of the Phoenicians is the mother ; the people of 
the Thebans is the father. ... I behold a picture of land 
and sea together. The picture is of Europa : the sea is that 
of the Phoenicians ; the land is that of Sidon. On the land, 
a meadow and a bevy of maidens. On the sea, a bull . . ." 
D. and C, I. xiii : " She persuaded him to bathe again, 
and as he bathed she looked, and having looked she touched, 
and having touched she praised, and the praise was the 
beginning of love." There is a close analogy between 
this archaistic simplicity attained by artifice, and that of 
our own modern attempts to imitate the prose of the 
English Bible. The " note " of both is coordinate structure. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 233 

respondence). 'What sweet more dainty than 
thy sight?' 

VIII. viii. T<ov Bva"rvx°vvT<ov elo-cv, ov twv 
aSifcovvTcov oi fiaypol (rhyme; correspondence). 

yEth., X. xxix. rot? avveTois aawera (f>6eyyo/iai 
(repetition ; correspondence) . 

1 To the intelligent I speak the unintelligible.' 

A. T., III. xvi. icaOdpcnov yeyovas aKaOdprayv 
crcD/jidTav (repetition; correspondence). 

rj roiv <rrr\d<yx v(DV °~ ov ™4>y X-V a ™ v yeyove rpo<f>r} 
(alliteration; rhyme; correspondence). 'Thy 
entrails ' sepulture is the robbers' nurture.' 

III. xxv. Z&v pev ovv Aldtoyfr eorl t# rpocjif), 

l .1. ' . L 

airoOavoiV 5' AlyvTTTLOS ttj Tacpy. 
(Parallel structure; assonance; rhyme; corre- 
spondence). 

VIII. viii. Siicrjv 8e8a>/cax; ov Se&toicev ( repetition 
forming group; alliteration between group and 
outside word). 

II. xxiv. aSo^ivohSvo-rvxeU (rhyme; cor- 
respondence). 

II. xxii. irapayv ov irdpeifU' 6/jlov be koX (f>evyco 
teal fievco (repetition; correspondence). 

IV. ix. *fl Sv(ttvx& VP& bWav evTVXV*™^ 1 ' 
(correspondence; repetition). 

I. xiii. Tac/>09 pev aoi 6 OdXapos, 
ydfjios S' 6 ddvaTOS, 
6pr)vo<; 8' 6 v/jLevcuos. 
(Three clauses parallel in structure; within each 
of first two clauses, assonance ; between first two 
clauses, assonance, alliteration, and correspon- 
dence). 
'Burial is your nuptial bed; 



234 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

your bridal comes now you are dead; 

a funeral wail is the song for you that should 
have ived! 

The figures of oxymoron, antithesis and home- 
ophony, which in their beginnings in Greek philo- 
sophical prose 87 were the natural though studied 
expression of an essential duality and contrast in 
the real world, reflecting in words whatever Hera- 
clitus and Hippocrates and Empedocles saw of 
the truth of things, have now but too evidently 
degenerated into mere artifice. Even when they 
have no substance to express, they continue to 
flourish rankly, because the rhetorician insists 
upon contorting and splitting the most innocent 
idea in order to squeeze a crude contrast out of 
the twisted fissure. And when, in the Greek Ro- 
mances, they do express any substance at all, it 
is the substance of a dismembered fabric of 
events, persons, and objects, — where disconnect- 
edness and irrelevancy prevail, where at any 
moment chance may step in with its abrupt 
changes and rude negations, and where one thing, 
instead of leading to its natural consequence, 
leads to its opposite, or to something that has 
nothing to do with it at all. Here indeed the 
loose structure and the flashy style fit each other. 
The loose structure requires the reader to leap 
in thought from an X to a Y that is not essentially 
connected with it: expecting more of X or its 
consequences, he is suddenly confronted with Y, 
and his expectation defeated. The flashy style, 
where X — which the reader never thought was 

87 Sec Norden, op, cit., pp. 17-23- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 235 

Y at all — is said to be Y, or where X and Y — 
which the reader had been associating — are sud- 
denly dissociated and opposed, is partly the fitting 
expression of such cheap relations between things, 
their irrelevancy, their haphazard connections, 
their violent severances — and partly deliberate 
clap-trap. Structure and style alike convey a 
base view of life and of the function of literature. 
So far from seeking to unify the divers phe- 
nomena of life under law, the Greek Romance 
prefers to keep them apart, in all their chance 
diversity, showiness, and separate sensuous ap- 
peal. Law, permanency, consistency, the unity in 
spirit of that which in matter is so various and 
contradictory — all this is too sober, too dull. Let 
us have what is truly interesting ; let us have what 
moves and jingles and glitters. Let us have the 
passing show. 

It is as if the Greek Romances were "made to 
order " for the entertainment of the Renaissance. 
Their authors, like Virgil, " divined what the fu- 
ture would love." Hardly any other kind of fic- 
tion, hardly any other view of life, could appeal 
more strongly to the sixteenth century novel- 
reader and novel-writer than the ornate, spec- 
tacular, rhetorical, sentimental, fortuitous medley 
which we have been attempting to characterize. 
The Renaissance, in its uncritical acceptance of 
everything Greek and Roman as ipso facto clas- 
sical, felt at liberty to choose according to its own 
unquiet taste, and thus established and for cen- 
turies maintained among the canons of classicism 



236 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

the late works of Alexandria and of the Hellen- 
ized and Romanized Orient — works which today 
are perceived not to be classical at all. Among 
them it chose to admire and to imitate the Greek 
Romances. What did the Renaissance in England 
do with this very distinctive body of fiction? 
What did it make of this great stock of types, 
motifs and incidents, pictures, models of narra- 
tive method, patterns of rhetorical device? The 
following chapters of the present study will at- 
tempt an answer. 



INTERCHAPTER 

Though the material facts concerning Renais- 
sance translations and editions of the Greek Ro- 
mances have already been presented in tabular 
form (ante, pp. 8-10), it may be not superfluous 
to add some further particulars bearing upon the 
accessibility of the chief of these Romances to 
Elizabethan writers, and to characterize briefly at 
least one of the Elizabethan translations— Day's 
paraphrase of Amyot's version of " Daphnis and 
Chloe." 1 

Heliodorus, first printed in 1534 at Basel, ex 
officina Hervaegiana, with a preface by Opso- 
poeus, 2 was first translated by Amyot (Paris, 
1547 3 ; Folio). It was not this French transla- 
tion, however, but Warschewiczki's translation 
into' Latin (Basel, 1551), which served as the 

1 Underdowne's Heliodorus, with its errors and quaint- 
nesses, and its occasional splendor of diction, has been 
adequately treated in Mr. Whibley's introduction to the 
" Tudor Translation " reprint. 

2 Whibley, p. xiv ; Script. Erot., p. iii. 

3 Brunet, and Grasse, both s. v. "Heliodorus"; Jacobs, 
Friedrich, "Einleitung" to his translation, p. 14 n. ; Sandys, 
II. 195; Dunlop, II. 404; Warren, 58. A second edition, 
Paris, 1549, mentioned as such by Brunet, Grassy and 
Jacobs (as above), is said by Lenglet, II. 9, and by Koert- 
ing I. 26, to be the first; while Whibley, p. xv, dates the 
first edition 1559- This date is certainly incorrect; the 
title page of the edition of 1559 (fol.) in the Columbia 
University Library plainly declares it to be " de nouueau 
reueue & corrigee," and the license (verso of title-page) 
calls it " nouuellement reueu, corrige & augmente par le 
mesme traslateur." 

237 



238 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

original of the English version by Thomas Un- 
derdowne j who " owed no debt to Amyot," but 
" follows the ingenious Warschewiczki into his 
every error." 4 

The date of Underdowne's first edition is in 
doubt. According to the " Athenae Oxonienses " 
(I. 431-2) it was printed for Henrie Wykes by 
Francis Coldocke in 1577. But in 1569 Francis 
Coldocke had already been licensed to publish 
" the ende of the x th boke of Helioderus Ethio- 
pium history e " ( Stationers' Register, Transcript, 
I. 388), — a license which seems to imply that the 
remainder of the " ^thiopica " had already been 
printed. On the other hand, Underdowne's ad- 
dress " To the Gentle Reader " in the edition of 
1587, would support the later date. " I translated 
(gentle reader) not long agoe, Heliodorus ^Ethio- 
pian history, which after I had committed to 
Maister Frauncis Coldocke, my friend, he caused 
the same to be published: wherewith (though not 
well advised) I was well contented, at that time: 
but nowe beeing by riper yeeres better advised, I 
am at thy hand forced, to crave pardon of my 
boldnesse" (U, p. 4). A period of ten years (to 
1577) might possibly be spoken of as "not long 
agoe " ; but even that seems rather to stretch the 
phrase; while eighteen years (to 1569) could 
hardly be covered by the phrase at all. 5 

4 Whibley, pp. xiv, n., xv. 

9 It seems possible that there was an edition in each of 
the years 1569 and 1577. If such be the case, may not 
Underdowne's words to the Gentle Reader, as given in the 
edition of 1587, have been reprinted from that of 1577? 
They would then allude only to the period of eight years 
between the first and the second edition. (Cf. Oeftering, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 239 

The later date (1577) still brings the "^Ethio- 
pica" into Elizabethan hands in plenty of time. 
"Euphues" is not yet out; Greene's first piece 
of fiction will not be licensed till three years later ; 
Lodge's will not be printed till seven ; Sidney has 
perhaps begun the " Arcadia " in desultory fash- 
ion, 6 but will not finish it for several years, and 
will afterward, before his death in 1586, recast 
rather more than the first half of it, with the 
'VEthiopica" full in his view. — As for the sub- 
sequent edition of Underdowne, in 1587, this, 
though it comes too late for Sidney, is ready to 
give Greene a new impulse toward the imitation 
of Greek Romance. 

In the case of both Longus and Achilles Tatius, 
translations long precede the editio princeps. 
Amyot is the pioneer again in publishing a trans- 
lation of "Daphnis and Chloe," his celebrated 
French version having been issued in 1559, ten 
years before the paraphrase into Latin hexameters 
by Lorenzo Gambara, 7 and nearly forty years be- 

p. 49.) The earlier date (1569) is also supported by the 
fact that a play based on the " JEthiopica " was performed 
at Court in 1572-3. The Revels Accounts for December, 
January and February, 1572-3, mention " ij spears for the 
play of Cariclia," and " An awlter for theagines." (Feuil- 
lerat, p. 175.) A still earlier excerpt from Heliodorus 
appeared, according to Oeftering, p. 92, n. 2, in James San- 
ford's " Amorous and Tri-gicall Tales of Plutarch, where- 
unto is annexed the Historie of Chariclea and Theagenes 
with sentences of the Greek philosophers. London, 1567." 
Oeftering adds that this was printed by H. Bynneman and 
dedicated to Sir Hugh Paulet of Hinton St. George, Som- 
erset ; that the " Historie of Chariclea and Theagenes " is 
at folios 10-27; and (p. 93) that its title designates it as 
" Gathered for the most part out of Heliodorus a Greeke 
Authour." 

8 Cf. Dobell, p. 74. 

7 Jacobs, J., Introd., pp. xv, xxx. 



24O THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

fore the princeps of 1598. (" Florentiae, Apud 
Philippum Iunctam. MDIIC.") 8 Annibal Caro 
had, to be sure, made a translation into Italian 
prose in 1538-40; but this was not published until 
1784, after a disappearance of more than two 
centuries. 9 

The Elizabethan version of " Daphnis and 
Chloe " by Angel Day was published in the same 
year as the current edition of Underdowne — 1587 ; 
and, like the latter, it entered at once into the 
work of the versatile Greene. It was too late to 
touch Sidney, who had died the year before. In 
fact, Sidney's " Arcadia " does not show the least 
sign of acquaintance either with the version of 
Amyot, or with " Daphnis and Chloe " in any 
other form. 

Day paraphrased Amyot's translation, adding 
and omitting, expanding and abridging, as he 
pleased. Textual particulars of his treatment of 
Amyot are given in Appendix A (post, p. 465) ; 
it may be well to notice here one or two of his 
more striking changes in the text, as well as 
some of the literary characteristics of his ver- 
sion. For, in a way, his " Daphnis and Chloe " 
is itself a piece of Elizabethan prose fiction. 

Obvious at sight is Day's omission of the 
Proem, — an omission which took from the Eliza- 
bethan reader Longus's explanation of his pas- 
toral as a series of pictures illustrated by appro- 
priate feelings. Equally obvious is Day's removal 

8 I have seen Ben Jonson's copy, now owned by a private 
collector. 

9 See Caro's "Opere" ("Classici Italiani "), Milano, 1812. 
Vol. 7 ; prefatory matter by Francesco Daniele (p. xxxii). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION *4 1 

of nearly three quarters of the original Third 
Book to the beginning of his Fourth, and his in- 
sertion, instead, of " The Shepherd's Holiday," a 
dull pastoral of his own in praise of Queen Eliza- 
beth. But of the liberties Day took with the text 
of his original perhaps the most interesting is his 
filling of the lacuna in the First Book. 10 As is 
well known, this was not authentically rilled till 
1809, when Paul Louis Courier transcribed from 
a MS. in the Benedictine Abbey 11 at Florence the 
missing passage, which he had discovered upon 
a previous visit, probably in 1807. The story of 
how, after transcribing the passage, he blotted the 
MS. page, and of the furious controversy that 
ensued, is one of the curiosities of literature. 12 
He had in Day a canny though not an authentic 
predecessor. The textual notes in Appendix A 
(post, p. 465) show how ingeniously Day drew 
from the passages after the lacuna most of the 
matter with which he filled it, and how he made 
guesses at the rest. 

With the spirit of " Daphnis and Chloe" Day 
took even greater liberties than with the letter. 
Longus, and Amyot after him, are " simple and 
sensuous " ; they draw their persons and their 
scenes with the pure Greek outline, as well as 

10 Mr. Joseph Jacobs, though he notices the attempts of 
later translators (p. xxx) to fill this celebrated lacuna, has 
apparently not observed Day's own interpolation. 

11 In 1832 the MS. was in the Laurentian Library (Fried- 
rich Jacobs, " Vorrede " to his translation of " Daphnis 
and Chloe," p. 14). I examined it there July 1, 1910. 

12 See Courier's " Lettre a M. Renouard sur une tache 
d'encre dans une copie de Longus" (1810), and authorities 
cited by Mr. Joseph Jacobs, pp. xix-xxii. 

17 



242 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

with the full Greek range of definite sensations. 13 
I have spoken of the effect as one of richness in 
simplicity. 14 Now where Longus and Amyot are 
simple, Day is composite. To Chloe's plain chap- 
let of pine he must add "all sortes of flowers," 
and when Chloe is likened to a nymph, he must 
liken her not only to a nymph, but also to Leda 
and to Io (A 29; Da 35-6) ; Amyot's " l'humeur 
de la fontaine " becomes in Day " the ouerflowing 
waues with Cristall humor" (A 8; Da 8-9). 
When Amyot says that Daphnis saw Chloe, Day 
speaks of him as " fastening his earnest lookes on 
her admirable beuties," and " wholie confused by 
Loue the force whereof distilling amaine within 
him, had wrought to his most secret entrailes" 
(A 29; Da 35-6). Day is thus continually forc- 
ing the note, — overdoing both Longus's objective 
descriptions, of which he blurs the clear outlines, 
and Longus's accounts of the children's iraOos, 
which he sentimentalizes. 15 He further compli- 
cates the simplicity of his original with fine writ- 
ing, 16 ink-horn terms, 17 and antitheses, 18 and with 

18 Ante, p. 168. M Ante, p. 169. 

" A 28, " le travail . . . baigner," a total of ninety-three 
words on the children's symptoms of love, becomes, at Da 
33-4, " And werisomness of the painefull trauel . . . their 
chiefest ease " — more than three hundred words. 

18 A 65 : " ta Chloe reviendra demain." Da 72 : " Thy 
Chloe, or ever the faire Arora next shall have quite vailed 
of her purple cover powdered with glimpsing stars, . . . 
shalbe againe returned unto thee." Da 99 : " Nowe the 
purple covert of Jupiters segniory, beganne to take hold in 
the element, etc." (not in A). 

17 Da 11: " Frustrate was his body of garments " (not 
in A). 

18 Da 34 : " Contentment reposed it selfe uppon their 
deepest disquiet, and from their greatest miscontentment 
sprang uppe againe their chiefest ease" (not in A). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 243 

adventitious matter the nature and extent of 
which may best be shown by an extract. The 
words in brackets are not in Amyot (pp. 7-8). 
Da 8-9 : " There was a certaine great caue, stand- 
ing in a rocke, [sacred sometimes to the N implies 
and therefore] called by the name of the Nimphes 
Caue, something crooked within, but altogether 
round without. In the inward part whereof were 
divers statues of [Goddesses and other] Nimphes, 
wrought [finely] out of stone, the feete unshod, 
the armes all naked, [and th' atire buckled on] 
the shoulders, their haires cast onely upon their 
necks, without tressing at all; girded they were 
upon their loynes, their lookes [sweetly] smiling, 
and their counternaunces such, [as seemed with 
interchangeable favors in delicate sorte to greete 
eache other]. Right under the hollowe rising of 
this caue, sprang in the middest of the bottom a 
[sweet] fountaine, which [raising it selfe, with 
a soft bubling,] gathered into a [pleasaunt 
springe] (ruysseau, A 8), wherewith the fresh 
and fruit full grenes [round about the same] were 
[continually] watered. Ouer the mouth of the 
caue, where the [overflowing waves with Cristal] 
humor had wrought [from the earth sondrie 
kindes of flowers and] hearbs of delicate vewe, 
hong divers flutes, Pipes, and Flagiolots, made of 
reedes, which the auncient shepheards had [often 
tofore-time] sacred [unto the Nimphes ]for [their 
greatest] offrings." 

But Day is not only overloaded and composite 
where Longus and Amyot are simple: he is 
meagre, generalized and vague where they are 



244 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

rich in specific sensations. He not only doubles 
or breaks their sharp outline ; he dulls it by nar- 
rowing his range of sensuous impressions. In- 
stead of their one clear image, he presents several 
vague images, each one blurred by his omission 
of, say, sound or odor from the description, or 
by his running off into conventional mythological 
verbiage of little or no descriptive force. Of 
Philetas's piping (A 76), so full of distinct 
sounds, Day says (84-5) that it was "handled 
with such perfection, as all that he plaied, you 
would have thought almost to have beene a thing 
in deede effected, whether it were in actions be- 
longing to the feeding and garding of all kinds of 
beasts, which in sundrie orderly times he diversly 
had expressed, or in any sort otherwise." He 
thus generalizes and puts in the alternative what 
his original gave specifically and distinctly. The 
varying sounds of the sailors' song and chorus, 
with its echo as the boat passes the headland and 
the bay (A 101) he greatly weakens (Da 125) ; 
and the passage on the coming of spring, with 
the piping of shepherds, the bleating of flocks, 
and the song of the nightingale, becomes abso- 
lutely dumb under his hand (A 92, Da 124). 
The dead dolphin, with its most ancient and fish- 
like smell, he omits altogether (A 104 ff.), — 
and it may be spared, perhaps; but so does he 
omit the fragrance of the fruit from Longus's 
lovely idyll of the golden apple (A 115 ff. ; Da 
134-5). As for the sensation of heat, he thinks 
to suggest it by saying that "Titan having 
wound hym selfe in the Crabbe, drewe fast to 
the Lions cabbin" (Da 38; not in A). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION. 245 

Add to all this that Day's version often blun- 
ders away from the plain meaning of Amyot's 
French ; 19 that, far more than Longus and Amy- 
ot, it emphasizes ridiculous and even contempti- 
ble aspects of rustic manners and character; 20 
that it altogether omits irony from the denoue- 
ment; that it suffers from the Renaissance lues 
Fortunae, the disease of magnifying to excess the 
agency of Fortune, 21 and that it adopts towards 
the two children an attitude half tender, half 
patronizing, but wholly foreign to its original; 22 
and you have some of its distinguishing charac- 
teristics as a piece of Elizabethan prose fiction. 
Its antitheses, overloaded ornament, sentimental 
"psychology," and lues Fortunae tempt one to 
sum the matter up by saying that Day handled 
the matter of Longus in something like the man- 
ner of Achilles Tatius. 

The editio princeps of Achilles Tatius was 

"Where A says (p. 8) that the nymphs' statues looked 
" comme si elles eussent balle ensemble," Da (8-9) trans- 
lates "seemed ... to greete eache other." In the same 
passage he translates " crease " by " crooked " (A 7, Da 8). 
A's " vignes du vignoble de Metelin " (42) become in Day 
(50) "the vines of Vignenoble in Mitilene," as if "vig- 
noble" were a geographical proper name. The account of 
the relative functions of Fortune and Providence at A 142 
is hopelessly muddled by Day (148). 

20 Lamon's greediness, Da 7; Myrtale's simple-minded 
question, ib., 8 ; Dryas's " clubbish condition," ib., 10 ; Dor- 
con's holiday finery, ib., 22, 23-4 (part of Day's interpola- 
tion) ; Dorcon's stratagem, ib., 29. 

31 Da 98, 99, I5i, 153, 153-4- Cf. ante, p. 123 n. 7. 

23 A 11: "les envoyerent tous deux aux champs garder 
les bestes." Da 13: "dispatched the two darlings of the 
earth to their severall heards." A 11: " Ces deux jeunes 
enfans." Da 14: "These Images of Beautie." Da 15: 
" these seemely portraictures of well pleasing youth " (not 
in A). 



246 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

printed at Heidelberg, " ex officina Commelin- 
iana," in 1601 ; 23 but, like Longus, Achilles Tatius 
had appeared in translation many years before. 
In 1544 Annibale della Croce (Hannibal Cruc- 
ceius) published at Lyons a Latin version of the 
last four books; in 1554, at Basel, a more com- 
plete version. 24 In 1546 Lodovico Dolce pub- 
lished at Venice the last four books in Italian, 
under the title "Amorosi Ragionamenti," — the 
publisher (Gabriele Giolito) declaring that the 
author's name was unknown, " unless perchance 
it be that Clitophon in whose person these dis- 
courses are told," and that the fragment had 
reached his hands " without its beginning and 
without its end." 25 He was of course mistaken 
as to the end. Angelo Coccio's complete (?) 
translation into Italian was published in Venice 
in 1560 (reprinted there in 1563 and 1568, and 
in Florence in 1598 and 1599) ; 26 and in 1568 
(Paris) appeared a French version "par B. Co- 
mingeois," who may be Belleforest. 27 

The first English translation is that of William 
Burton, 1597, now existing in a copy probably 
unique, concerning which the owner, Mr. A. T. 
Porter, of London, has favored me with the fol- 
lowing particulars : " Burton translates the whole 
eight books. ... I have read the whole work 
through twice, and parts of it many times, [and] 
I have detected no omissions or insertions; in 

38 W. Schmid, in Pauly-Wissowa, I. 246-7 ; Lenglet, II. 6. 

24 W. Schmid, ibid. 

" Copy in Columbia University Library, fol. 2V, 3r. 

89 Lenglet, II. 78. 

81 Ibid. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 247 

fact, I think, its almost immediate suppression is 
proof of the faithfulness of the translation. It is 
a charming specimen of Elizabethan prose." 28 

Burton's translation came too late to affect 
" Euphues," Greene, or Sidney ; Nash published 
no prose fiction after "The Unfortunate Trav- 
eller" in 1594; Lodge none after "A Margarite 
of America" in 1596 (written 1592). It would 
seem that Burton's late appearance and imme- 
diate suppression cut him off from the influ- 
ence which he must otherwise have exercised 
upon a reading and writing public so fond of 
Achilles Tatius's vein. But, as has just been 
seen, Latin, French and Italian translations were 
accessible long before the publication of " Eu- 
phues " ; and, as will abundantly appear from 
internal evidence, Greene and Sidney knew their 
" Clitophon and Leucippe " thoroughly. 

38 For a detailed account of this volume, see Appendix C. 



PART TWO 

ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



CHAPTER I 

John Lyly 1 

The connection between Lyly and Greek Ro- 
mance rests partly upon proof, and partly upon 
probable conjecture. There is proof that the plot 
of " Euphues " is derived from Boccaccio's tale 
of " Tito and Gisippo " (Decam., X. 8) . There is 
probable conjecture, by such authorities as Wil- 
helm Grimm, Erwin Rohde, and Gaston Paris, 
that Boccaccio's tale is indebted to a Greek origi- 
nal. This indebtedness may be secondary, by way 
of the Old French poem " Athis et Prophilias," 
which is known to be one of the sources of " Tito 
and Gisippo " and which is believed to be derived 
from a late Greek Romance now lost; or it may 
be primary, — several of Boccaccio's tales (see 
post, p. 370) showing clearly that he was in con- 
tact with Greek fiction. But whether primary or 

1 In " Campaspe," I. i, 64 f., 70 f., there is a probable allu- 
sion, and in " Mother Bombie," I. i, 26 ff., an unmistakable 
allusion, to the "^Ethiopica." " Euphues," however, shows 
no traces of the influence of Heliodorus. 

In " Gallathea " I. i, 28-34, the antithetical description 
of the flood is unmistakably from A. T., IV. xii. But 
" Euphues " gets nothing from Achilles Tatius, except pos- 
sibly some traits of style (see post, p. 256 n. 3). 
248 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 249 

secondary, the transmission of specific elements 
from Greek Romance to Boccaccio, and from 
Boccaccio to Lyly, is almost certain. 

From Boccaccio Lyly takes not only narrative 
material, but narrative technique as well : the di- 
vision of similar material into similar stages and 
scenes — its "articulation"; and the employment 
of pathos, of soliloquy, and of dialogue. In 
both " Euphues " and " Tito and Gisippo " a 
young stranger sojourning in a city becomes the 
friend of a young citizen, who is betrothed to a 
girl of great beauty and noble birth. To her the 
citizen introduces his friend, who falls in love 
with her at sight. The new lover retires to his 
chamber, and in a soliloquy determines that his 
love must prevail over his friendship. During his 
lovesickness, the citizen visits him, inquires the 
cause of his distress, and offers his own services. 
The stranger dissembles his love. — So far the two 
stories are the same, both in material and in con- 
struction; but here they part company. Boccac- 
cio's is a tale of true friendship : — the stranger at 
length acknowledges his love and the citizen sur- 
renders to him his betrothed. Lyly's is a tale of 
fickleness in love, and of friendship betrayed: — 
the stranger continues to dissemble, covertly wins 
the affection of his friend's betrothed, becomes 
her acknowledged lover, and is later jilted for his 
pains. But it is safe to say that Lyly took the 
beginning of his story, with its evolution and ar- 
ticulation, from Boccaccio ; and it is difficult not to 
think that he also took a hint for his continua- 
tion : let the stranger go on dissembling, and po- 
etic justice will require that he be jilted. The 



250 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

derivation of " Euphues " from "Tito and Gi- 
sippo" is confirmed by numerous verbal par- 
allels. 14 

If, now, Boccaccio got either this narrative 
material or this narrative technique, mediately or 
immediately, from a Greek Romance, then it will 
be certain that Lyly, at one or more removes to 
be sure, also inherited the Greek legacy. That 
Boccaccio did learn the lesson of narrative form 
from Greek Romance cannot, of course, be dem- 
onstrated ; but it is quite probable ; and, as far as I 
know, there is no reason why it should not be true. 

The discussion of Boccaccio's source requires 
us to consider various versions of the mediaeval 
" Legend of Two Friends." The table on pages 
258 ff. shows the material and its articulation (as 
far as it has any) in each version; and shows, 
too, the striking difference between "Athis et 
Prophilias " and all the other versions before 
Boccaccio. This is a difference in kind. The 
other versions are excessively bald and jejune. 
" Athis et Prophilias " is rich in matter, and 
highly developed in narrative art. In it, and in 

la S. L. Wolff, " A Source of Euphues " (Modern Philol- 
ogy, April, 191 0), gives the proofs in full. M. Feuillerat 
("John Lyly," pp. 34 n. 2, 74-5, 274-5) asserts that the 
love-story in " Euphues " is autobiographical. The passage 
in Forman's diary upon the strength of which M. Feuillerat, 
almost without argument, makes this assertion, is, to say 
the least, unconvincing. But even supposing the material 
of the love-story to come from Lyly's life, the form of it — 
its articulation, pathos, soliloquy, dialogue — comes from 
Boccaccio. Mr. J. D. Wilson's convincing article, " Euphues 
and the Prodigal Son " (The Library, October, 1909), does 
not negative my conclusions. It demonstrates, rather, that 
one strand more of literary tradition, besides those already 
recognized, enters into the composition of " Euphues." 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION. 25 1 

it alone, is there any descriptive " setting " 
(Athens and Rome), any division of the plot 
into stages and scenes, any attempt at character- 
ization by means of dialogue, soliloquy, or pathos. 
It is evidently Boccaccio's chief source. 2 When 
it differs from his other source, — the " Disciplina 
Clericalis " — Boccaccio prefers " Athis et Proph- 
ilias" in all but three cases (*in the table). 
Perhaps it would be truer to say that the story in 
the "Disciplina" differs chiefly from "Athis et 
Prophilias " in being so crudely told as simply 
not to offer Boccaccio the narrative material and 
articulation that he wants. Boccaccio, then, tak- 
ing from the " Disciplina " several details towards 
the end of his story, takes nearly everything else 
from " Athis et Prophilias " ; takes, indeed, those 
very details of articulation and pathos, — the visit 
to the betrothed, the soliloquy, the conflict between 
love and friendship, the inquiry, the dissimulation, 
etc., — which later, Lyly gets from "Tito and 
Gisippo." 

In all probability these details— conventions 
they almost seem to be — come from a lost Byzan- 
tine novel. Grimm ("Kleinere Schriften," Vol. 
Ill), concluding his discussion of the Second 
Part of "Athis et Prophilias" (a regular romance 
of chivalry, not here tabulated), remarks (pp. 
269-270) : " Der erste Theil dagegen [the Part 
we are here concerned with] zeigt die vornehmen 
und iiberfeinerten Sitten des griechischen Kaiser- 
thums, ausseres Geprage und zur Schau getra- 

* Landau's and Lee's treatments of the sources of De- 
cameron, X. 8, quite fail to do justice to "Athis et 
Prophilias." 



252 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

gene Tugenden"; and (p. 274) " Ich vermuthe, 
die urspriingliche Quelle dieses ersten Theiles ist 
eine neugriechische Bearbeitung der Sage von den 
beiden Freunden gewesen, abgefasst etwa im 
elften Jahrhundert . . . Eine Spur des ver- 
mutheten byzantinischen Werks aufzufinden habe 
ich mich jedoch vergeblich bemuht." 

Gaston Paris ("La Litt. fr. au Moyen Age," 
§51) is quite certain that "Athis et Prophilias " 
has a Greek original: " ... A partir des croi- 
sades, les rapports des Francs avec les Grecs 
devinrent directs, et plusieurs romans, qui n'ex- 
istent plus en grec, mais que difTerents indices 
nous permettent de reconnaitre comme byzantins, 
furent mis en francais sans passer par le latin, et 
sans doute grace a une transmission simplement 
orale. Tels sont. . . . Athis et Porphirias [sic: 
this is one form of the name] par Alexandre de 
Bernai ... ; la deuxieme partie de ce tres long 
poeme parait une suite d'aventures de pure in- 
vention : la premiere est un conte grec dont nous 
avons diverses formes {une entre autres dans le 
Decameron de Boccace)." 

And Rohde ("Der Gr. Rom.," p. 541, n. 2) 
thinks that Boccaccio may have been in im- 
mediate contact with the Greek. He queries: 
"Ob nicht fur seine Darstellung der Sage von 
Athis und Prophilias, Decam. X 8, Boccaccio ein 
mittelgriechisches Gedicht benutzt haben mag, 
welches zu dem uns erhaltenen altfranzosischen 
Gedicht iiber diesen Gegenstand eine Parallele 
bildete?" 

Upon the possible existence of a Greek original 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION. 253 

a curious light is shed — a light which may per- 
haps be only the light of a will-o'-the-wisp, — by 
Goldsmith's version of the tale (see last column 
of table). This differs in so many particulars 
from every other version with which I am ac- 
quainted, that it may quite possibly be derived 
from some source other than " Tito and Gisippo." 
Goldsmith, whether truly or falsely, professes that 
it is " Translated from a Byzantine Historian." 
The table shows sufficiently its plot and struc- 
ture. Some details, however, seem worth com- 
ment. ( 1 ) The story opens as follows : " Athens, 
long after the decline of the Roman Empire, still 
continued the seat of learning, politeness, and 
wisdom. Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, repaired the 
schools which barbarity was suffering to fall into 
decay, and continued . . . pensions to men of 
learning. ... In this city, and about this period, 
Alcander and Septimius were fellow students 
together. . . . Alcander was of Athens, Septi- 
mius came from Rome." The historical setting, 
then, is consistently placed within Byzantine 
times. (2) When Septimius, who had been on 
the point of dying for love of Alcander's be- 
trothed, Hypatia, was at length married to her, 
" this unlooked for change of fortune," says the 
story, " wrought as unexpected a change in the 
constitution of the now happy Septimius " — a 
trait of style quite characteristic of Greek Ro- 
mance. (3) Further emphasis is thrown upon 
Fortune by the lack of emphasis upon friendship. 
As Septimius does not recognize Alcander until 
the latter has already been cleared by the con- 



254 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

fession of the real murderer, Septimius does not 
accuse himself to save his friend, and there is no 
generous contest between them as to which shall 
die to save the other. (4) Alcander's retreat to 
a tomb is in the vein of Greek Romance (cf. 
" Habrocomes and Anthea," and " Babylonica"). 
(5) So is Alcander's being sold into slavery (cf. 
Leucippe's enslavement). (6) That one friend 
should actually sit in judgment upon the other, 
and, without recognizing him, be about to con- 
demn him to death, is again the characteristically 
bizarre final trial scene of Greek Romance (cf. 
Chariclea, restored to her father, and, unrecog- 
nized, condemned to death by him). (7) The 
points where Goldsmith professes to have 
abridged his original are precisely those at which 
diffuseness would have been characteristic of 
Greek Romance. "It would but delay the nar- 
rative to describe the conflict between love and 
friendship in the breast of Alcander on this oc- 
casion. ... In short, forgetful of his own 
felicity, he gave up his intended bride." This 
points backward to long soliloquies, and long 
psychological analyses of his " conflicting emo- 
tions." Later, when he was prosecuted by Hypa- 
tia's kinsmen, " his innocence of the crime laid to 
his charge, and even his eloquence in his own 
defense, were not able to withstand the influence 
of a powerful party." This points backward to 
the long forensic harangue which, if Goldsmith 
really used a Byzantine original, might well have 
been there. Finally, after Alcander's escape from 
Thrace, "travelling by night, and lodging in 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION. 255 

caverns by day, to shorten a long story, he at 
last arrived in Rome." This points backward to 
a Reiseroman. All three of the matters which 
Goldsmith perhaps abridged — analysis of emo- 
tion, forensic harangue, and the moving accidents 
of travel — are just the kind of thing that is 
actually found in excess in Greek Romance. 
Either Goldsmith had made so thorough a study 
of this genre as to be able to put his ringer ac- 
curately upon its characteristics, and to modify 
accordingly (when he wished to manufacture an 
imitation) the material he found in some non- 
Byzantine version, or — he was telling the truth. 
There is nothing inherently improbable in the sup- 
position that while reading widely for one of his 
hack Histories, Goldsmith did come across this 
tale in some " Byzantine Historian." 



This rather complicated discussion, which has 
wandered far from Lyly, may now be recapitu- 
lated : 

(a) Lyly's "Euphues" gets its earlier portion 
— both narrative material and narrative structure 
— from Boccaccio's " Tito and Gisippo." 

(b) Boccaccio's "Tito and Gisippo" gets this 
same narrative material and narrative structure 
from "Athis et Prophilias." 

(c) "Athis et Prophilias" probably gets its 
narrative material and narrative structure from a 
lost Greek Romance. At least, so think Grimm 
and Gaston Paris. 

(d) Besides using "Athis et Prophilias," Boc- 
caccio may have been in immediate contact with 



2$6 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

its Greek original, and may have derived directly 
therefrom some of this narrative material and 
narrative structure. At least, so thinks Rohde. 

(e) The Greek original of "Athis et Prophi- 
lias" and of "Tito and Gisippo," or another 
Byzantine version of the same theme, may have 
been used by Oliver Goldsmith. 

On the whole, it seems easier to believe than 
not to believe that " Euphues " is one of a series 
of tales the conventions of whose structure are a 
tradition from Greek Romance. 3 

s It is rather a temptation to think that Lyly's style, 
" Euphuism," owes something to that of the Greek Ro- 
mances. I have, however, found no direct evidence on 
this point. The similarities, striking as they often are, can 
probably be explained as due to the general diffusion of 
Ciceronian and late Greek rhetoric throughout Europe 
during the Renaissance. To this rhetorical material the 
Greek Romances undoubtedly contribute ; but it would be 
difficult to say just what. Nevertheless the following pas- 
sages suggest Achilles Tatius rather specifically. 

Euphues, I. 322-3 : " If it were for thy preferment and 
his amendment, I wish you were both married, but if he 
should continue his folly whereby thou shouldest fal from 
thy dutie I rather wish you both buryed." (Antithesis: 
marriage and burial.) 

Euphues, I. 210. Euphues soliloquizes: "The wound that 
bleedeth inwarde is most dangerous, . . . the fire kept close 
burneth most furious, . . . the Ooven dammed up baketh 
soonest, . . . sores having no vent fester inwardly . . ." 
Cf. A. T., II. xxix ad fin (cf. III. xi ; VII. iv). 

Euphues, I. 201: "And so they all sate downe, but 
Euphues fed of one dish which ever stoode before him, the 
beautie of Lucilla." Cf. A. T., I. v(Clitophon at first sight 
of Leucippe cannot eat. but makes his meal of contemplat- 
ing her beauty). V. xiii (Melitta makes her meal of con- 
templating Clitophon). 

Euphues, I. 208 : Euphues retiring love-sick to his cham- 
ber, " Amiddest therefore these his extremityes between 
hope and feare," soliloquizes. Cf. A. T., II. xxiii (Clito- 
phon in Leucippe's chamber) and cf. VI. xiv (Clitophon in 
prison). 



iS 



a S 8 



THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 



Oliver Goldsmith : 

Septimius and A I' 

cander. In The 

Bee, No. i, 1759. 


V^ 


V 




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Lyly : Euphues. 
1578. 


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Sir Thomas Elyot : 

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Early 14th Cent. 


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menus : Dialogus 

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13th or 14th Cent. 


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pre : De Proprieta- 

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1251. 


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One is a citizen (A), the other a 
stranger (B). 


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father sends B to A's father. 

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cally. 

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ophy. 

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A's betrothed is of high birth and 
station. 


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about through A's taking B to 
see her. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



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CHAPTER II 

Sir Philip Sidney 

In view of the detailed discussion, in the pres- 
ent chapter, of the plot, motifs and narrative 
structure of Sidney's " Arcadia/' it seems well to 
give here a rather full analysis. 1 

Main Plot 

A. Basilius, the aged King of Arcadia, receives in 
Delphos an Oracle (mentioned, I. iii-iv, 12-16; given 
in full II. xxviii, 225V.), which declares that his 
elder daughter shall be stolen from him and yet not 
lost; that his younger shall embrace an unnatural 
love; that their husbands shall plead at his bier 
though he be not dead; that a foreign prince shall 
sit on his throne; and that, before all this, Basilius 
shall commit adultery with his own wife. To avoid 
fulfilment of this oracle, he retires to the forest 
with his family, leaving as regent his faithful coun- 
cillor Philanax. His younger daughter Philoclea 
he keeps in his own lodge guarded by himself and 
his young Queen Gynecia; his elder daughter Pa- 

1 References containing chapter-numbers, e. g., " I. xvii, 
75V.," are to book, chapter and folio of the Quarto of 1590. 
After folio-numbers, "v." indicates verso; its absence, 
recto. 

References not containing chapter-numbers, e. g., " IV. 
419," are to book and page of the Folio of 1627. 

Cross-references within the analysis are based on the fol- 
lowing system : portions of the Main Plot are lettered A, B, 
etc. ; portions of the Previous History of the Princes are 
lettered a, b, etc. ; Episodes are numbered 1, 2, 3, etc., with 
subdivisions lettered a, b, etc. 

9$f 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 263 

mela he commits to the guardianship of his chief 
shepherd Dametas, who lives in another lodge with 
his wife Miso and daughter Mopsa. All men of 
rank are forbidden access to the princesses (I. ix, 

36)- 

B. (I. xiii-xiv, 57-64V.) Pyrocles, Prince of Mace- 
don, having fallen in love with the picture and de- 
scription of Philoclea, disguises himself as an 
Amazon and betakes himself to the neighborhood 
of Basilius's lodge. The King, in love with the fair 
Amazon at sight, asks her to remain. Gynecia pene- 
trates Pyrocles's disguise, and falls desperately in 
love with him. Though she is jealous of her 
daughter, her love prevents her disclosing her dis- 
covery. His name as the Amazon is Zelmane. 

C. (I. xviii, 76V -79V.) Musidorus, Prince of 
Thessalia, and Pyrocles's cousin and friend, beholds 
Pamela, and falls in love with her. Not long there- 
after Pyrocles finds him disguised as a shepherd. 
His shepherd's weeds he has bought from the 
herdsman Menalcas, who, he feels, must now be 
put out of the way, lest he betray him. So 
Musidorus says he is a fugitive from Thessaly, 
where by chance he has killed a favorite of the 
Prince; and he sends Menalcas to Thessaly with a 
letter to his friend and servant Calodoulus osten- 
sibly inquiring about the chances for his return, but 
really directing Calodoulus to detain Menalcas, as a 
prisoner, and treat him well. (For Calodoulus as 
deus ex machina, see V. 417, ed. 1627.) 

Upon the occasion of the annual pastoral games 
(I. xix, 80V.-85V.), he offers his service (and a 
sum of money) to Dametas, feigning himself to 
have been recommended to D. by his elder brother 
the shepherd Menalcas, and by his father, both dead. 
His own name, he says, is Dorus. Dametas agrees 



264 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

to take him if he that day prove acceptable to the 
King. A lion attacking Philoclea is killed by Zel- 
mane; a bear attacking Pamela is killed by Dorus. 
The King willingly grants Dorus permission to re- 
main with Dametas. Thereupon they all go to hear 
The First Eclogues. 

Both Gynecia and Basilius (II. i, 100, ioiv.) make 
a declaration of love to Zelmane. Dorus pretends 
to court Mopsa in order really to court Pamela (II. 
ii, 104V.-107V.), who gives him such signs of favor 
as to encourage him to tell her the story of his 
life (II. iii, 109V.-111), purporting to be the story 
of Musidorus, a prince of Thessaly. He ends his 
very brief recital (of the early portions of a, and 
of d) by asserting that the Prince is disguised as a 
shepherd for love of the Princess Pamela, and that 
the end of his story is not yet, but belongs to the 
destinies and to astrology. 

When the two sisters are abed together (II. v, 
121-122V.), Pamela confesses to Philoclea her love 
for Musidorus, whose indirect self-revelation and 
courtship she has of course understood without let- 
ting him see that she has done so, or giving him 
any mark of favor. On the morrow (II. vi, 125V., 
II. x, 147V.) she calls him to give an account of 
the parentage and early life of Pyrocles and Musi- 
dorus. He relates a, lapsing once (f 137) into the 
first person, to his confusion and Pamela's amuse- 
ment. 

D. (II. xi, 147V.-155) The princesses bathe in the 
river Ladon. A water-spaniel [see I. xi, 49 (2b)] 
which has been playing among the reeds, runs off 
with Philoclea's glove; and leads Zelmane to his 
master Amphialus, who in his solitary wanderings 
has chanced upon this spot, and been taken captive 
by the charms of his cousin Philoclea. Zelmane in 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 265 

a jealous fury forces him to fight, and wounds him 
in the thigh, promising that her near kinsman 
Pyrocles shall further uphold that quarrel. The 
Princesses now being dressed come up and recog- 
nize their cousin. He excuses himself, restores the 
glove, and retires to nurse both his wounds. 

Pyrocles reads Plangus's plaint for Erona (II. 
xii, 1 56-1 58V.), as written down by Basilius when 
Plangus recently passed through Arcadia. At his 
request (II. xiii, 160-162V.) Philoclea tells 50 (which 
Pyrocles knows already, as he has been a chief 
actor in these events) ; and he calls upon Pamela 
to tell the story of Plangus; but is interrupted (II. 
xiv, 163-166) by Miso with an account of an em- 
blematic picture she once saw of Love as a monster, 
and by Mopsa with a clumsy fairy-tale. Philoclea 
having induced Mopsa to reserve the ending of the 
tale (II. xv, 166-172), Pamela tells 6a. She is just 
coming to the story of Antiphilus's treason to Erona, 
when Basilius comes in, and again puts off the con- 
clusion. Basilius commissions Philoclea to plead his 
cause (II. xvi, 172V.-175V). 

Pyrocles-Zelmane is lamenting on Ladon's bank 
and writing his plaint on the sand, when Philoclea 
finds him (II. xvii, 176-179V.) and begins Basilius's 
plea. He interrupts her with his own, reveals his 
love, and is assured of hers. He also declares his 
name and rank. At her request, he then takes up 
the narrative of the adventures of Pyrocles and 
Musidorus, from the point where Musidorus left 
off a (II. x, 147) and where Philoclea herself had 
suspended the account she had received from Plan- 
gus, 5a (II. xiv, 162V.). Pyrocles's continuation is b. 

E. Pyrocles having finished his narrative (II. 
xviii-xxiv), Philoclea resumes Erona's story (II. 
xxiv, 212), but he interrupts her with his love mak- 



266 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

ing, and Miso interrupts with scolding and threats. 

Gynecia (II. xxv, 213-214) has just had an ill- 
boding dream, when Miso tells her that Zelmane 
and Philoclea have been together alone. Love and 
jealousy conflict in Gynecia's heart; she soliloquizes, 
and, hastening to the young people, sends Philoclea 
away to Basilius. Gynecia is beginning to declare 
her passion to Pyrocles (II. xxv, 214V.-216), when 
a rout of drunken and rebellious clowns comes up 
and attacks them. Pyrocles keeps the rebels at bay 
until the ladies have made good their retreat to the 
lodge. Musidorus comes to his cousin's assistance, 
and together they perform prodigies of valor. 

The populace attack the lodge with axe and fire 
(II. xxvi, 216-220) ; Zelmane goes out, mounts the 
throne near the gate, and in a long and eloquent 
harangue brings them to the point of submission. 
At this (II. xxvii, 220-224), one Clinias, a sly, 
plausible fellow with a smattering of education and 
a gift of words, who has been an actor, who is now 
Cecropia's tool to stir up sedition in Arcadia for 
the advancement of her son Amphialus, and who 
indeed has incited this very insurrection, sees his 
chance to swim with the stream; he loudly admon- 
ishes the insurgents to lay down their arms, and 
behave as he and other faithful subjects have all 
along advised! 

A certain young farmer, who has become enam- 
ored of Zelmane, has hopes that if the insurgents 
win, Zelmane will be granted to him. Now he 
strikes Clinias a great wound upon the face, — who 
scrambles to the throne and is protected by Zel- 
mane. At the farmer's blow, the mob is in an 
uproar. Every man's hand is against his neighbor; 
the leaders are soon killed, the farmer among them; 
and Zelmane, Basilius and Dorus complete their 
rout. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 267 

Clinias now accounts for the insurrection as 
merely a piece of drunken folly, the result of the 
people's excessive potations the day before in honor 
of the King's birthday. He is believed and dismissed. 
Basilius sends to Philanax for a conference, and 
to other noblemen to investigate the insurrection. 
(II. xxviii, 224-227) Clinias hurries away to warn 
Cecropia that the investigation bodes danger to her, 
and that she had better take some speedy resolution. 
Basilius contemplates returning to public life, as he 
considers that the most threatening portions of the 
oracle— the text of which he now (225V.) for the 
first time gives Philanax (and the reader)— have 
already been happily fulfilled: princely Zelmane by 
occupying his mind has taken from him the care of 
his elder daughter Pamela, who yet is not lost; his 
younger has come to love Zelmane at his command, 
but that love was hated by Nature— viz., by Gynecia's 
natural jealousy; the sitting in his seat he dreams 
already performed by Zelmane when she mounted 
his throne to confront the insurgents; the adultery 
he hopes to commit with Zelmane, whom afterwards 
he will have to wife. As for his daughters' mar- 
riage to such dangerous husbands— that he will pre- 
vent by keeping them unmarried. So he sings a 
Hymn to Apollo, bids the shepherds prepare for 
rural pastimes, and relates to Zelmane (II. xxix, 
227V -233V.) the story, so long deferred, of Eronas 
distress (5b). The shepherds open their "Second 
Eclogues." 

(III. i, 244-247V.) Moved by Musidorus s recent 
danger, Pamela gives him signs of her love; by 
which encouraged he offers to kiss her. She puts 
him away in deep disdain and offense. Despairing 
he retires to the forest. m m 

[Now follows the long Episode of the Captivity: 
8 The Main Plot is afterwards resumed in the 



268 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Folio of 1627, which is not divided into chapters; 
so that the absence here of references to chapters 
will suffice to show that the citation is from this 
edition.] 

Book III 

F. (347-350) After Basilius has received his 
daughters and Zelmane back from their captivity 
(see 8), and has returned to his retirement at the 
lodges, Zelmane and Dorus tell each other their ad- 
ventures ; and the latter discloses a plan that he and 
Pamela have formed to elope from the nearest sea- 
port, and remain virgin till he can invest her with 
the Dukedom of Thessalia. The Princes, with much 
courtly protestation of friendship, resolve to part. 

Zelmane (351-354) on her way to Dorus's lodg- 
ing enters a cave, and perceives a lady lying pros- 
trate in a corner and dolefully soliloquizing. In the 
course of her lament, the lady names herself: it is 
Gynecia ! Zelmane hastily retreating makes a noise 
and is discovered. Gynecia holds Zelmane back, 
pleads for love, declares that she has penetrated 
Pyrocles's disguise, and threatens that if he still 
disdains her, her vengeance shall involve Philoclea 
as well as him and herself. Pyrocles decides that 
his only course is to yield. 

Meanwhile (355-6) Musidorus has hired a ship 
at the port, and a carriage to go there: all that re- 
mains is to get Dametas, Miso and Mopsa out of 
the way. To Dametas he tells a tale of one Aristo- 
menes's treasure which he has partly unearthed, at 
a place ten miles away in a direction opposite that 
of the seaport: there are rich medals, and a cypress 
chest, and, further down, a stone whose hollow 
sound promises a still richer vault. Thither Da- 
metas betakes himself, and is duly encouraged by 
finding the medals with which Musidorus has " salted 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 269 

the mine." To Miso (357-9), as soon as her hus- 
band is gone, Musidorus tells how he has seen 
Dametas dallying with a pretty shepherdess Charita. 
They have made an assignation for that very night 
in Oudemia Street, Mantinea ! Off hurries the jealous 
shrew. Now for Mopsa, — whom Musidorus would 
readily tie up if Pamela did not say No. So he tells 
Mopsa (360-361) that Apollo, after his servitude 
to Admetus, having been received back by Jupiter 
from the top of a neighboring ash tree, has made it 
a wishing tree. Whoever in the state of a shepherd 
will sit in this tree, muffled in a scarlet cloak, shall 
have his wish, as sure as Musidorus loves Mopsa! 
He leaves her perched on the tree-top, so muffled 
that she can not undo the cloak, and so high that she 
can scarce get down without help. There she is to 
remain till a voice calls her three times: then she 
is to answer boldly. 

The lovers (361-5) ride off through the forest, 
till Pamela, tired out, rests her head on Musidorus's 
knee and falls asleep. While he contemplates her 
charms a crew of clownish villains comes shout- 
ing in. 

Pyrocles in the cave with Gynecia (365-7) con- 
fesses himself a man and a Prince, acknowledges 
his love for Philoclea, but feigns that it can not 
compare with his passion for Gynecia; who gives 
a half promise that her daughter shall be the price 
of his complaisance. This Pyrocles promises, and 
then draws Gynecia from the cave lest she insist 
upon an immediate consummation. 

Pyrocles muses (372-4) all night how to rid him- 
self of his two unwelcome lovers, till he begins to 
see the outlines of a stratagem. At dinner that day, 
in the presence of both King and Queen, he gives 
such signs of favor that the King (375~377) asks 



270 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

the Queen to look after Philoclea, who has taken 
to her bed in despair at Pyrocles's pretended aban- 
donment of her. Alone with Basilius, Pyrocles ap- 
points that night for a rendezvous in the cave. 
Then he steps to Philoclea's room, and, still feign- 
ing indifference toward her, takes Gynecia aside into 
a bay window and appoints for her the same time 
and place. Each — both King and Queen — is to make 
sure that the other is asleep. After supper, which 
all three hasten through, Gynecia pretends to be 
unwell, and goes to bed, in order to set Basilius a 
good example — who is indeed well pleased at her 
early retirement. But now Pyrocles takes her once 
more aside (37&-380), and as if by way of after- 
thought, suggests that she may with greater ease 
be first in the cave ; she is to take his outer garment, 
let she rouse suspicion; he himself, muffled in her 
garments, as a sick woman might plausibly be, will 
lie by Basilius's side until the King sleeps, and then 
will steal away to the cave and to her. Confused 
by the suddenness of the plan, and his quick offer 
of his outer garments, and induced by the thought 
that the grantor must be allowed his own way of 
granting, she yields, giving him, as is needful, the 
key of the lodge, — the object of his stratagem. 
So Pyrocles lies down in the King's bed with head 
and face hidden. Gynecia happening upon an old 
love-philtre, which she has never used, now pours 
it into a jewelled cup to make sure of Pyrocles, 
and goes with it to the cave, where she lies ex- 
pectant. Meanwhile Basilius, who has waited in 
Philoclea's room till Gynecia should be asleep, creeps 
darkling to his chamber, treading softly, collid- 
ing with sharp corners everywhere, and in fear at 
every creak he makes. Where assuring himself 
that his bedfellow sleeps, he steals forth to the cave. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 2*]1 

He enters the bed and, calling upon the name of 
Zelmane, embraces her he finds there; who dares 
not reveal who she is, and so receives him gently. 

As soon as Basilius is gone, Pyrocles bars the 
gate, (381-387), and fortifies the lodge as well as 
he can impromptu, in order that his and Philoclea's 
preparations for escape may not be interrupted. 
Then he hastens to her chamber, which being open, 
he overhears her sing two sonnets and speak a 
soliloquy lamenting his desertion of her and accus- 
ing him of inconstancy. He enters, hears her direct 
charge, gives his justification in his plan for their 
escape together, and upon her still expressing dis- 
belief falls into a swoon. She repents, but is too 
weak to endure a journey. Then he realizes his 
folly in not sooner acquainting her with his device, 
her sudden knowledge whereof has rendered impos- 
sible its execution. So he lies down by her side, 
and they both fall asleep. 

(End of Book III. "The Third Eclogue" follows.) 

Book IV 

Dametas digs all day, until, when he at last turns 
over the great stone, he finds naught there but a 
mocking couplet. Returning in disgust and weari- 
ness (404-409), he finds his house deserted, and so 
fares forth again at his wits' end. There he beholds 
Mopsa in her ash tree, and calls her, first joyfully, 
then impatiently, then with curses ; who at the third 
call throws out her arms to Apollo, loses her hold, 
and comes tumbling down. To all his questions 
about Pamela's escape she keeps repeating her wish 
to Apollo that a King may be her husband; till 
Dametas thinks her mad, and lays hands upon her 
to shake her back to her wits. At this moment 
arrives Miso, after a vain search for Dametas in 



272 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Mantinea — where no such girl as Charita and no 
such street as Oudemia are known! Finding him 
with a young woman in his arms, she soundly 
cudgels them both. Still thinking and talking at 
cross purposes, the three return to their lodge, and 
now begin to realize the prospect of serious punish- 
ment for Pamela's escape. At last Dametas, think- 
ing that Pamela may have gone to spend the night 
with her sister, betakes himself to the King's lodge, 
and, though to his astonishment he finds the gate 
barred, yet lets himself in at a cellar-door which 
has escaped the notice of Pyrocles. In Philoclea's 
chamber he finds the sleeping lovers, takes from 
the room all weapons, and fast bars the door. Then 
he bruits abroad what he has seen ; until a shepherd 
comes running to him crying " The King is dead." 
In fact (409-416), as morning approaches, Ba- 
silius has left his wife's side to go to his wife's 
side. While he stands in the mouth of the cave, she 
rises and discloses herself to him, and overwhelms 
him with shame and repentance, but is very willing 
to forgive his offense. This magnanimity delights 
him, and the two are perfectly reconciled, when 
Basilius espies the potion, and despite Gynecia's 
remonstrances, drinks it off. He falls apparently 
dead. Gynecia feels herself morally guilty of his 
death, and recalls her dream (II. xxv, 212V.-213) 
which she interprets to mean that she too must die. 
She therefore tries to give herself up a prisoner 
to the shepherds who soon arrive. For all her con- 
fessions of guilt they are scarcely prevailed upon 
to take her into custody. Their lamentations reach 
the ear of Philanax, who, more resolute, places 
Gynecia under strong guard. Dametas and Miso 
too he causes to be imprisoned and flogged for their 
negligence. He sends out a search for Pamela, and 
then proceeds to the King's lodge. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 273 

Pyrocles wakes immediately after Dametas leaves 
the place, and finds himself disarmed and both him- 
self and Philoclea prisoners (417-426). After a 
survey of the chamber, he is able to break out only 
a bar from the window, sufficient for a weapon 
but not for escape. He hears too the loud voice of 
Dametas without, proclaiming the disgrace of Philo- 
clea, and realizes that, according to the Arcadian 
law, he has brought death upon her. The only 
alternative he can think of is to kill himself, that 
she may seem to have killed him in defence of her 
honor. He does indeed fall upon the iron window 
bar, which, however, is too blunt to do more than 
pierce his skin and bruise his ribs. The noise of 
his fall wakes Philoclea, who runs to him in horror, 
and implores him to give up his fell intent. He 
tells her why he has chosen this course, and the two 
discuss suicide. At last, upon her threat that if he 
kill himself she will kill herself too, he consents to 
live, announcing, however, that he expects her to 
support his assertion that he came thither to violate 
her chastity but failed, and to withhold his real 
name, for the honor of his house. Both are now 
taken into custody by Philanax. 

The boors who (III. 365) waked Pamela are 
those remnants of the Arcadian rebels who did not 
submit but retired to hide in the forest. They now 
recognize Musidorus as having made such havoc 
among them during their revolt, and (4 2 7~433) 
Pamela as a valuable means whereby to purchase 
their peace with the King. Accordingly they cap- 
ture the lovers, whom they decide to return to 
Basilius. Next day, Musidorus has almost suc- 
ceeded in persuading their captors to go along with 
them to Thessalia and gain great reward, when the 
whole party meet a troop of Philanax's horsemen, 

19 



374 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

and the boors' present fears overcome their cupid- 
ity; so that they go forward. But it is to their 
death. For the horsemen, learning who they are, 
and desiring for themselves the credit of bringing 
in Musidorus and Pamela, kill the rebels every one. 
The prisoners they deliver to Philanax just as Pyro- 
cles is being taken into custody. Pyrocles breaks 
from his guards and embraces Musidorus. Phila- 
nax, in order to sift the matter, has them confined 
together under surveillance. Pamela claims to be 
her father's heir, even under the Arcadian law that 
a female heir must be either twenty-one or mar- 
ried; for, she says, she is married. But Philanax 
confines her in the lodge with Philoclea. 

Now arises great dissension (434-438) as to the 
polity and the ruler to be chosen for Arcadia; amid 
all of which Philanax moves quietly onward to his 
purpose of bringing the King's murderers to jus- 
tice. Timautus, an ambitious nobleman, whose pro- 
posal that Philanax shall marry one of the Prin- 
cesses and he himself the other has been scornfully 
rejected by Philanax, attacks him openly in a speech 
to an assemblage of the nobles. While Philanax 
is answering, news comes of a fresh insurrection. 
Kalander, seeing the Princes imprisoned, has been 
by his old love and admiration for them fired with 
desire not only to set them free, but to commit 
Arcadia to their rule. He has persuaded the citi- 
zens of Mantinea to support his enterprise. Phi- 
lanax considers the uprising so dangerous as to 
warrant him in secretly removing the Princes, even 
in having them killed at once. But their custodian, 
Simpathus, will not consent to either course. Thus 
the day ends in tumult. The shepherds begin their 
Eclogues at sunset. 

(End of Book IV. "The fourth Eclogue" follows.) 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 375 

Book V 

In the midst of these troubles (444-453), Evar- 
chus, King of Macedon, father of Pyrocles and 
uncle of Musidorus, arrives with a troop of twenty 
horsemen, purposing to visit his old friend Basil- 
ius. But hearing of the King's death, he sends 
to Philanax, offering to remain and take part in 
the funeral. In the arrival of this King, renowned 
for his justice even more than for his victories, 
Philanax sees the salvation of Arcadia. To him he 
will commit jurisdiction. Evarchus is to sit in 
judgment the very next day. To this the assem- 
blage agrees, only Timautus opposing, whom the 
mob thereupon attacks with sticks and stones, so 
that with the loss of an eye he is forced to see!: the 
protection of Philanax. Evarchus consents to take 
jurisdiction of the cause in hand; and with Philanax 
rides to the lodges, where the people, who are still 
assembled though it is late at night, receive him 
with acclaim. After addressing them and setting 
the trial for the morrow, he bids them retire. 

That night (453-458) Gynecia spends in painful 
thoughts and dreams; the Princesses in mutual con- 
fidences and in writing letters to their prosecutors; 
the Princes in protestations of friendship, in depre- 
cation of each other's sorrow, in declaration that 
their loves were worth all this grief and more, in 
high thoughts of the life to come, and in a brave 
sonnet against the fear of death. Kalander has 
brought them their princely garments, which they 
don. Just before dawn they fall asleep, and sleep 
until their summons comes. 

The trial begins (458-463). Evarchus clad in 
black sits upon Basilius's throne, which has been 
placed in the midst of the green; the people about 
it, all silent and orderly; the King's body on a bier 



2*]6 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

before it; and Philanax as prosecutor. The Prin- 
cesses, it is decided, need not be sent for. Gynecia 
is led forth first, ill-apparelled and dejected; then 
come the two Princes, most splendidly arrayed, and 
with erected countenances. As Musidorus passes 
among the Arcadians, he harangues them in favor 
of Pamela, for he does not know that she is not to 
be tried; and as soon as Pyrocles stands before the 
judge he pleads for Philoclea, again taking upon 
himself whatever blame may be supposed to rest 
upon her, and begging to know what is to be her 
fate. Evarchus at once decides that she is to be a 
life-long prisoner "among certaine women of re- 
ligion like the Vestall Nunnes"; whereat Pyrocles 
rejoices, both that her life is safe, and that none 
else shall ever enjoy her. When Philanax is open- 
ing his case against the Queen, she stops him and 
repeats her confession. Thereupon Evarchus con- 
demns her to be buried alive with Basilius. 

Next (464-472) the Princes are arraigned, and 
their denial of the Arcadian jurisdiction is over- 
ruled. Philanax then inveighs against Pyrocles; 
and Pyrocles answers, telling the truth, except that 
he shields Gynecia by declaring that he told her of 
her husband's assignation with Zelmane, and sent 
her to the cave to take Zelmane's place. That ex- 
plains, too, the Queen's wearing Zelmane's garment. 
He demands a trial by combat with Philanax, who 
is willing; but Evarchus refuses to grant it. 

The court proceeds to try Musidorus (472-475). 
Philanax inveighs against him. Musidorus replies, 
reminding the court of the service he and Pyrocles 
have rendered against the insurgents, and suggest- 
ing finally that the way out of the difficulty is to 
marry the Princesses to the Princes. 

Evarchus now gives judgment (475-477). Both 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 277 

the question of jurisdiction and the questions of 
fact he decides against the Princes. Finally he 
sentences Pyrocles to be thrown from a tower, and 
Musidorus to be beheaded. 

As the Princes are being led away (477-478), 
Kalander comes rushing up, bringing with him 
Calodoulus the Thessalian, that friend of Musi- 
dorus to whom Musidorus sent Menalcas to be de- 
tained (I. xviii, 79-79V.). Calodoulus has thus 
been informed of the Princes' whereabouts (the 
only person so informed except Pamela and Philo- 
clea) ; and auguring ill of the undertaking, espe- 
cially when Menalcas told him of Musidorus's 
disguise, has written to Evarchus and has himself 
come from Thessaly to Arcadia to do what he 
can. From Kalander he has just learned of the 
trial, and has identified the shepherd Dorus as his 
own Prince. Now he tells Evarchus who the pris- 
oners are. 

Philanax is mollified (479-481) ; not so Evarchus, 
who confirms the sentence. Thereupon Musidorus 
defies his uncle as far as he himself is concerned, 
but pleads for the life of Pyrocles. Pyrocles gently 
stops Musidorus's harsh words to Evarchus, and 
gently begs Evarchus to spare the life of Musidorus. 
Thus the two continue to vie with each other in gen- 
erosity; till Evarchus agains commands that they be 
led away. 

But now (481-482) those near the bier of Basilius 
hear him groan, and perceive his body stir. He is 
alive: the supposed love-potion was only a sleeping- 
draught. Timed for thirty hours, it has kept the 
weak frame of Basilius rather longer under its 
influence; but he is quite revived. 

He now sees that the oracle is fulfilled indeed. 
He sends for Gynecia, asks her pardon, clears her 
of all charges against her, and with great honor 



278 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

restores her to the throne. Pyrocles is married to 
Philoclea, Musidorus to Pamela. Philanax, Calo- 
doulus, Kalander, Clitophon, and' Sympathus, are 
all fully rewarded. — The stories of Artaxia and 
Plexirtus; of Erona and Plangus; of Helen and 
Amphialus; of Menalcas and the daughter of Calo- 
doulus; of Strephan and Klaius; of the son of 
Pyrocles and Philoclea, named Pyrophilus, and of 
the daughter of Musidorus and Pamela, named Mel- 
idora — these some other pen may write: mine is 
weary. 

History of Pyrocles and Musidorus Before They 
Enter the Main Plot 

(a) (II. vi, 126-129). Evarchus, King of Mace- 
don, gave his only sister in marriage to his friend 
Dorilaus King of Thessalia. Their son was Musi- 
dorus. The soothsayers at his birth predicting that 
he should overcome certain Kingdoms, the Kings of 
Phrygia, Lydia and Crete combined to destroy him, 
and to that end invaded Thessalia, but were re- 
pulsed by the aid of Evarchus. Evarchus now mar- 
ried the sister of Dorilaus, and by her had a son 
Pyrocles, for whom also there were wonderful 
prognostications. 

Pyrocles was sent (II. vii, 129V.-133V.) to be 
reared with his cousin Musidorus. When Evarchus 
was besieging Byzantium, he sent for the two 
cousins, now grown friends as well, who prepared 
a fleet and set sail. A storm scattered the fleet and 
drove their ship upon a rock. 

(II. viii, 134-138V.) Pyrocles was cast ashore 
upon the coast of Phrygia, and was quickly taken 
to the King, a cruel, suspicious tyrant; who learn- 
ing how his captive came thither and suspecting 
that the fleet had been gathered against himself, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 279 

made preparations to take his life. Musidorus, 
rescued by a fisherman of Pontus, heard of his 
friend's peril, and through a nobleman of that coun- 
try offered himself in the stead of Pyrocles to be 
executed. The King, very glad to kill his chief 
enemy, accepted the offer and set Pyrocles free. 
In disguise, Pyrocles procured his acceptance as the 
executioner's assistant, and upon the scaffold ap- 
peared not only armed himself, but bearing the 
executioner's sword as well. This he put into Musi- 
dorus's hand, saying " Die nobly." The two quickly 
cleared the scaffold, but would soon have been over- 
powered, if a quarrel between two soldiers had not 
just then issued in a general riot of the troops. 
Hereupon the King fled from his post of observa- 
tion; a rumor of his death went about; and some of 
the younger nobles cried " Liberty," routed the citi- 
zens, overpowered the guard, and took possession 
of the city. The insurgents made Musidorus their 
chief and crowned him on the scaffold! 

But (II. ix, 139-x, 142) the Princes left Phrygia 
to seek fresh adventures. In Galatia (II. x, 142V- 
147) they succored the King (unnamed) and his 
true-born pious son Leonatus, against his wicked 
bastard son Plexirtus. (See 4, a and b.) 

In Lycia (II. x, 147-xiii, 162V.) they came to the 
assistance of Queen Erona, whom (Tiridates) the 
King of Armenia, aided by Plangus, Barzanes, and 
Evardes, was besieging. (See 5a.) 

(b) Evardes having been slain by Pyrocles (II. 
xviii, 181-185), Anaxius, the eldest and proudest of 
Evardes's three nephews, sought to avenge his death. 
He challenged Pyrocles to single combat; who ac- 
cepting departed from Queen Erona and from Mu- 
sidorus too, that he might try the adventure alone. 
But Musidorus followed, to be at hand in time of 
need. On the way, Pyrocles witnessed the adven- 
ture of Pamphilus (7a). 



280 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

After making peace, as he supposed, between Pam- 
philus and Dido, Pyrocles (II. xix, 185V.-190) rode 
on to his meeting with Anaxius, who attacked him 
at once. The combatants broke their lances at the 
first encounter, then for a while fought with swords, 
until Anaxius's horse was impaled upon a broken 
lance. At that both champions dismounting con- 
tinued to fight on foot, when, Dido passing by as 
Pamphilus's captive, Pyrocles rode off to her rescue, 
despite the taunts and jeers of Anaxius and the 
country folk a 1 , out. This rescue accomplished, he 
lodged that night at the house of Dido's father, 
Chremes, whose treachery next day (?b) resulted 
in Pyrocles being rejoined by Musidorus. 

The King of Iberia, coming thither by chance, 
stopped the fray and invited the Princes to his court 
(II. xx, 191-194), where they were presented to his 
Queen, Andromana. (See 6b.) Andromana fell in 
love with them both, and scrupled not to show her 
passion to both, soliciting them openly. But being 
continually repulsed, she thought to force them, and 
so upon a false charge that they were plotting to 
overthrow the Kingdom (as they had done in Pontus 
and Phrygia) she had them imprisoned, but con- 
tinued to implore their love. It happened that Pal- 
ladius, son of the King and Queen, loved his cousin 
Zelmane (daughter to his mother's half-brother, 
Plexirtus, who had left her at the Iberian court to 
avoid the insecurity of his own estate). But she 
loved Pyrocles, and begged Palladius to have the 
Princes set free. Palladius pleaded with his mother 
in vain. But another opportunity favored them. 

In Iberia, jousts (II. xxi, 194V.-198V.) are held 
each year at the anniversary of the royal wedding 
day. On this occasion the Knights of Queen Helen 
of Corinth bade fair to carry off the honors; and 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 28 1 

at length Palladius persuaded his mother to let Py- 
rocles and Musidorus take part in the tournament 
for the honor of Iberia. They were sworn to go no 
further than Palladius went, and to attend him 
wherever he did go. When, therefore, he rode away 
from the lists, they went with him unresisted, and 
made good their escape into Bithynia. But now 
Andromana sent a troop in pursuit, and herself 
came with it. The Princes and Palladius easily put 
it to flight; and Palladius rashly pursued. One of 
his own subjects — one who had been a favorite of 
Andromana and was jealous of the Princes — mis- 
took Palladius for one of them, and slew him. An- 
dromana stabbed herself on her son's body and died. 

Parting thence (II. xxii, 199-203V.), the Princes 
learned from the lament of Leucippe the end of the 
story of Pamphilus. (See fc.) Further on they 
were overtaken by Zelmane, disguised as a page 
under the name Daiphantus, who for love of Pyro- 
cles had followed him thus, and now offered him 
her services. Not recognizing her, he accepted, and 
she served him devotedly for two months. On the 
border of Galatia they witnessed the fatal combat, 
incited by the wiles of Plexirtus, between his faith- 
ful friends, the brothers Tydeus and Telenor (see 
4c) ; and they got the story from the leader of the 
band which was to have killed whichever brother 
should survive. 

The news of her father's treachery so smote Zel- 
mane (II. xxiii, 204-208), that, languishing as she 
was for love, she now pined away. Her fatal stroke 
was the further news that her father was in danger 
of losing his life, unless he were rescued at once. 
Hereupon she disclosed her identity, confessed her 
hopeless love, and begged a last boon of the Princes: 
Pyrocles was to rescue her father, and upon his 



282 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

return to Greece was to take the name Daiphantus, 
in her memory ; Musidorus at the same time was to 
take the name Palladius, in memory of her hapless 
lover; and they were to bury her obscurely, not suf- 
fering her friends to know her fate. Then she died. 

Pyrocles rode off, much against his will, to rescue 
Plexirtus, leaving Musidorus to help the King of 
Pontus against Otaves, brother to that Barzanes 
whom Musidorus slew in defence of Erona (xiii, 
161). 

Both these adventures the Princes accomplished 
successfully. Pyrocles set Plexirtus free by killing 
the monster that was to have devoured him. Musi- 
dorus slew Otaves's giant allies and took Otaves 
prisoner, but spared him and made him a friend. 

Then the Princes hastened to take ship (II. xxiv, 
2o8v.-2iiv.) for Greece. They wished to return 
to their parents; to resume the interrupted combat 
with Anaxius (II. xix, i86v.), who sought Pyrocles 
throughout Peloponnesus, defaming him as he went; 
and to visit Arcadia, famous for the valor of Arga- 
lus and Amphialus and for the beauty of its prin- 
cesses. Their ship was royally furnished by Plex- 
irtus, who made such professions of repentance and 
goodwill that they actually began to trust him, and 
set sail. But when they began to look for land, an 
old man whom Plexirtus had sent with them as 
guide disclosed to them that he and the Captain had 
been commissioned by Plexirtus to murder them in 
their sleep: thus Plexirtus hoped to gain the hand 
of Artaxia and her Kingdom of Armenia, which she 
had promised to whosoever should kill the Princes. 
When the ship neared Greece, they saw the Captain 
whisper the old man that the time was come, and 
the old man try to dissuade him. Thereupon the 
Captain commanded his crew to take the Princes 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 283 

alive or dead, and, the old man commanding them the 
contrary, the Captain gave him a blow. Thus the 
mellay began ; friend and foe indistinguishably fought 
in that narrow space ; the old man was killed by one 
of his own side; some of the crew joined to defend 
the Princes; and a little remnant took to a boat, 
which others again leapt into and swamped. At last 
a fire broke out, stopped the fighting, and engaged 
the efforts of all the survivors. In vain. The Princes 
leapt overboard. Pyrocles finding the Captain cling- 
ing to a floating mast, killed him, and bestrode the 
mast himself. 

[Here the "Arcadia" opens, in mediis rebus.] 

(c) On the coast of Laconia (I. i, 1-6), Pyrocles 
and Musidorus escape from the burning ship. Musi- 
dorus, cast ashore and revived by the shepherds, sails 
out to rescue Pyrocles, who is found riding a mast. 
Just then pirates frighten off the rescuers, and take 
Pyrocles. Musidorus gives up the rescue perforce. 

(d) Musidorus is conducted by the shepherds to 
Arcadia (I. ii, 6-iv, 18), where Kalander, a gentle- 
man of that country, entertains him under the name 
Palladius, and tells him A. 

Kalander now hears (I. v, 18-24) that his son 
Clitophon, who is about to be married, has been 
taken prisoner by the Helots, then in revolt against 
the Laconians. To account for Clitophon's partici- 
pation in that fight, Kalander's steward tells Musi- 
dorus ia. 

Musidorus and Kalander head an expedition (I. 
vi, 24-28) to rescue Clitophon. By M.'s direction 
the Arcadians disguise themselves as rebellious peas- 
ants, and, placing chains upon the gentlemen of 
their army, offer to make common cause with the 
Helots. These, in the absence of their leader, admit 
the Arcadians to Cardamila, their city, where the 



284 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

gentlemen are soon released and lead an attack from 
within the walls. In this fight the Helots are about 
to be worsted, when their leader Daiphantus (= Py- 
rocles) returns, rallies them, and confronts Musi- 
dorus, whose helmet he strikes off. Thereupon he 
recognizes his friend and declares himself. 

(e) Pyrocles is kept in the hold by the pirates 
(I. viii, 34-35V.) until they are hard pressed by a 
Laconian galley, when they arm him and other pris- 
oners, promising them liberty as a reward for a good 
defense. In the fight Pyrocles kills the commander 
of the galley, but is himself taken, and lodged in 
prison at Tenaria. The revolting Helots make a 
jail-delivery and release him. His valor in several 
minor combats leads them to choose him, under the 
name Daiphantus, to their leadership, just left va- 
cant by the slaying of Demagoras. (See ia.) Here 
he gains so many victories that he is able to nego- 
tiate a very advantageous peace with the Spartans. 
These negotiations are what cause his absence at the 
time of the Arcadian attack upon Cardamila. But 
at the critical moment he returns, rallies the Helots, 
and fights with Musidorus until he strikes off his 
friend's helmet and recognizes him (d ad fin.). The 
fight is stopped (I. vi, 26-28). Pyrocles persuades 
the Helots to give up Clitophon and Argalus, who 
return with the Princes and Kalander to the latter's 
house. There they all witness lb. 

(/) Musidorus and Pyrocles now (I. viii, 33-35) 
tell each other d and e respectively, thus bring- 
ing their adventures up to the moment of the narra- 
tion itself; and Musidorus repeats A for the benefit 
of Pyrocles, at the same time showing him the pic- 
ture of Philoclea on the wall of a pavilion in Ka- 
lander's garden. Kalander at Pyrocles's request also 
gives him information about A. With this and with 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 285 

the picture, Pyrocles falls in love (I. ix, 35V.-38; I. 
xn 'i> 57) J partly confesses his passion to Musidorus, 
and takes occasion of a hunt (I. x, 40) to slip away 
secretly to the Arcadian court. [He thus enters the 
Main Plot, at #.] 

A letter which he leaves for Musidorus (I. x, 
40V.-41V.) tells only that he goes because of love, 
but tells not whither. Musidorus and Clitophon de- 
part to seek him. 

In the valley they find the scattered pieces of a 
suit of armor (I. x, 42-43V.), which Clitophon rec- 
ognizes as that of his cousin Amphialus. Musidorus 
puts it on. Soon they are attacked by the armed 
escort of a coach, and valiantly defending them- 
selves, kill or rout their assailants. They find in 
the coach a beautiful lady (Queen Helen of Corinth) 
gazing intently upon a picture (that of Amphialus). 
Addressing Musidorus by the name of Amphialus, 
she begs him to end her woes. He discloses him- 
self and asks her to tell her story. She relates 2a 
(I. xi, 44-48). 

Scarcely has she concluded, when Ismenus, Am- 
phialus's page, dressed in Musidorus's armor, attacks 
Musidorus (I. xi,48v.-49v.) for wearing Amphialus's 
armor. Clitophon recognizing Ismenus, explains 
matters and ends the attack. Ismenus promises to 
return his master's armor as soon as he dare venture 
to approach him. He relates 2b. Queen Helen pro- 
ceeds on her journey, attended by Clitophon. Musi- 
dorus continues his quest. 

After traversing Laconia, Sicyonia, Corinth, Elis 
and Achaia (I. xii, 50-56V.) he returns to Arcadia, 
for he remembers that Philoclea's picture recalled 
to Pyrocles his old love (Zelmane). And there he 
finds him disguised as an Amazon. His remonstrance 
against such an ignoble course, and more generally 



386 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

against women and love, almost brings on a quarrel ; 
but soon the cousins resume their friendship, and 
Pyrocles (I. xiii, 57-xiv, 64V.) gives an account of 
his love affair up to the time of the actual narration : 
B. He begs Musidorus to remain concealed in an 
arbor private to Pyrocles, in order that Pyrocles may 
receive his counsel and help, and show him Philo- 
clea. As Pamela is with Philoclea, Musidorus sees 
her too, and falls in love with her. [Thus he too 
enters the Main Plot, at C] 

Episodes 
1. Argalus and Parthenia 

(a) (I. v, 19-24) Argalus, a knight of Cyprus and 
cousin to Queen Gynecia, accompanies her to the 
Arcadian court, where he becomes the friend of 
Clitophon and is by him presented to Parthenia, 
Clitophon's cousin. Argalus and Parthenia fall in 
love, but Parthenia's mother favors a wealthy suitor, 
Demagoras, and does all she can to thwart Argalus. 
After her death, Demagoras, realizing that his suit 
must fail, rubs poison on Parthenia's face, and spoils 
her beauty. Though Argalus remains faithful, she 
will not consent to his sacrificing himself, and, de- 
clining to marry him, secretly escapes. Banished 
for his crime, Demagoras becomes leader of the 
rebellious Helots. In their chief city Argalus seeks 
him out, slays him, and is captured. Clitophon leads 
an expedition to rescue his friend, but is taken him- 
self. The two are kept safe from the vengeance of 
the Helots by the influence of the latter's new leader 
( Daiphantus = Pyrocles ) . 

(b) (I. vii, 31-33) Argalus is released as a result 
of Kalander's expedition, and is taken to Kalander's 
house. There appears a lady closely resembling 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION ^87 

Parthenia. She declares that she is a kinswoman of 
Queen Helen of Corinth, and that she bears Par- 
thenia's dying wish that Argalus and she shall wed. 
Upon his refusal, she reveals herself as Parthenia 
indeed, cured by a skillful physician of Queen Helen. 
Argalus and Parthenia are married (I. viii, 35) at 
Kalander's house, amid the rejoicing of the noble 
guests. 

(c) (III. xii, 290-295) Amphialus, having taken 
the princesses captive and being besieged by Basil- 
ius, defeats many of Basilius's knights. At length 
Basilius sends for Argalus, who at once leaves his 
nuptial bliss at the call of honor. After a terrible 
combat he receives a mortal wound. Parthenia 
comes too late to do aught but receive his last words. 
He is buried with military pomp ; she, inconsolable, 
vows to follow him. 

(d) (III. xvi, 308V.-311V.) Disguised as "The 
Knight of the Tomb" she challenges Amphialus, 
who after a short and one-sided combat wounds her 
mortally. She dies calling the name of Argalus, and 
is buried in his tomb with great pomp and lamen- 
tation. 

(Their epitaph, not given in the ed. of 1590, is 
given at p. 288 of the ed. of 1627.) 

2. Amphialus and Queen Helen 
(a) (I. xi, 45-48) Amphialus, son of Basilius's 
younger brother (unnamed), and of the unworthy 
Cecropia, Princess of Argos, was reared by Timo- 
theus, a great Corinthian lord, with whose son 
Philo'xenus he formed a close friendship. When 
Philoxenus courted Queen Helen of Corinth, he in- 
troduced his friend to her to further his suit. Though 
Amphialus was faithful to his trust, the Queen fell 
in love with him, and told him so. Indignant, he 



288 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

left her court. Philoxenus coming to woo in per- 
son heard from her of her preference for Amphialus. 
He overtook him, and forcing a fight upon him was 
slain. Timotheus, who presently arrived, fell dead 
upon his son's body. Overcome with grief, Am- 
phialus threw away his armor, retired to the forest, 
and declared undying hatred against Queen Helen, 
cause of all this woe. She now seeks him that she 
may die at his hands. 

(b) (II. xi, 153V.-155) In his solitary wanderings 
he chances upon the spot where Pamela and Philo- 
clea are bathing in the river Ladon ; he falls in love 
with Philoclea; his spaniel betrays his presence; 
Pyrocles wounds him; and Amphialus retires to 
nurse his wounds. 

(c) (III. xxiv, 342V.-XXV, 346) In consequence of 
Cecropia's wicked attempt to force Philoclea to marry 
Amphialus, Amphialus has been sorely wounded by 
Musidorus, and, now attempting suicide, re-opens 
these wounds and stabs himself besides. Queen 
Helen takes his almost lifeless body to be cured by 
a surgeon of hers at home. 

[Episode left unfinished.] 

3. Phalantus and Artesia 

(a) (I. xv, 66-xvii, 76) Phalantus, a bastard 
brother of Queen Helen, is as shallow-hearted as he 
is brave and courteous. Returned from the war 
against the Helots, he fancies himself in love with 
Artesia. She is really angling for Amphialus, but 
she, too, is shallow, is not deeply in love with any- 
one, and is content to accept the lip-worship of 
Phalantus for the credit it brings her. Desiring that 
her fame may reach Amphialus, she entraps Phalan- 
tus into a promise to maintain by challenge the 
supremacy of her beauty. He has never been over- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 289 

thrown, but has defeated many adversaries and taken 
from them as prizes the portraits of their ladies, 
which, to the number of eleven, he bears in tri- 
umphal procession at the Arcadian court. After 
he has there unseated several knights, among them 
Phebilus, who champions the beauty of Philoclea, 
he is himself at last overthrown by Pyrocles, who 
disguised as an ill-appareled knight, champions that 
same beauty. Artesia thereupon leaves Phalantus 
in scorn, but he is glad of his riddance. 

(b) Later, Artesia acts as Cecropia's tool to en- 
trap the Princesses of Arcadia (III. ii, 248, 252) ; 
plots treachery against Cecropia (III. xiv, 301-304) ; 
and is executed at her command (III. xxi, 332; 
xxiii, 339). See 8. 

4. The Galatica (Paphlagonica) 

(a) (II. x, 142-146V.) Infatuated by the wiles of 
his bastard son Plexirtus, the (unnamed) King of 
Galatia (Paphlagonia) ordered his servants to kill 
Leonatus, the true-born heir to the throne ; but they 
spared him and allowed him to escape to a foreign 
country. There he was just gaining advancement 
when he heard that Plexirtus had deposed and 
blinded his father. Leonatus returned to succor the 
old man, who begged to be led to the top of a high 
rock, that he might throw himself from it and die. 

His plaint being overheard by the Princes Pyro- 
cles and Musidorus, engaged their interest. They 
defended him and Leonatus against an armed troop 
headed by Plexirtus himself, who came to take his 
brother's life. With the aid of the new King of 
Pontus they forced Plexirtus to retreat to a for- 
tress, where they besieged him. The old King 
crowned Leonatus and died. Plexirtus surrendered, 
but dealt with Leonatus so cunningly that he was 
pardoned. 



2$0 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

(b) (II. xxii, 201V.-203) Now he plotted to poi- 
son Leonatus, who in his mistaken piety refusing 
to kill his father's son, assigned to him instead (that 
Plexirtus's ambition might find a field elsewhere) 
his own right to the conquest of Trebizonde. This 
city Plexirtus's faithful allies, the brothers Tydeus 
and Telenor, soon acquired for him. But, once 
seated on the throne, he began to fear them, and 
plotted to put them out of the way. He told each 
of them separately and secretly that he had been 
challenged by the King of Pontus to single com- 
bat, — a tale which was plausible by reason of the 
old grudge between the kings. (See II. x, 145 
supra.) When the appointed day drew near, he 
feigned himself ill and again secretly and separately 
requested each brother to go in his place, making 
each swear to keep the secret even from his brother. 
And "he told Tydeus, the king would meet him in 
a blew armour; & Telenor, that it was a black 
armour; & with wicked subtiltie (as if it had bene 
so appointed) caused Tydeus to take a black armour, 
& Telenor a blew; appointing them waies how to 
go, so as he knew they should not meet, til they 
came to the place appointed, where each had prom- 
ised to keep silence . . . ; and there in await he had 
laied . . . murtherers, that who ouerliued the other, 
should by them be dispatched." 

Pyrocles and Musidorus came up towards the end 
of this combat and parted the brothers, but too late 
to prevent their death. From the chief of the mur- 
derers, who had attacked the Princes when they 
first appeared, the Princes learned this story. 

A messenger sought Tydeus and Telenor (II. 
xxiii, 204V -207V.) to tell them of the danger of 
Plexirtus, who unless rescued at once would suffer 
death. The messenger told his tale to the Princes; 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 291 

and Pyrocles, having pledged himself to the dying 
Zelmane to succor her unworthy father, unwillingly 
undertook the task. An ancient knight, he learned, 
whose kinsman Plexirtus had murdered, had now 
for revenge entrapped Plexirtus in his castle by 
means of a forged letter purporting to be from 
Artaxia, in which she promised marriage to Plex- 
irtus and begged him to come to her in secret. 
Plexirtus on his way with a small escort had been 
captured by the old knight, who threatened to de- 
liver him to a monster, but yet proclaimed that if 
any so loved Plexirtus as to attempt to slay that 
monster, Plexirtus should be saved if they suc- 
ceeded. Pyrocles slew the monster and set Plex- 
irtus free to practise new villainies. 

For instance (II. xxiv, 209V.), in order to gain 
Artaxia's hand, and add Armenia to his kingdom, 
Plexirtus hired the captain and the crew of the 
vessel on which the Princes were returning home, 
to murder them both. Thus he hoped to gain the 
price that Artaxia had set upon the Princes' heads. 
His expectations were fulfilled: he married Artaxia 
(II. xxix, 232V.-233) and was crowned King of 
Armenia. 

[Episode left unfinished; Plexirtus left unpun- 
ished.] 

5. Erona, Antiphilus, and Plangus 

(a) (II. xiii, 159V.-162V.) Erona, Princess of 
Lycia, contemning Love, caused Cupid's images to 
be defaced. He punished her by causing her to fall 
in love with Antiphilus, her nurse's son. Endeav- 
oring to dissuade her from this love, in favor of 
her suitor Tiridates, King of Armenia, her father 
pretended that Antiphilus had fled the country, 
pretended to have executed him, etc. Thereupon 
she made attempts at suicide, which broke her 



292 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

father's heart, so that he died, leaving her queen. 
She was about to marry Antiphilus, when Tiridates 
besieged her. He was accompanied by his sister 
Artaxia, and aided by Plangus, Evardes, and Bar- 
zanes. To the aid of Erona came Pyrocles and 
Musidorus. Tiridates offered to match his three 
champions against the two princes and Antiphilus. 
In the ensuing combat, Musidorus slew Barzanes 
and Pyrocles slew Evardes, but Antiphilus was 
taken alive by Plangus. Tiridates gave Erona three 
days in which to yield to him : otherwise Antiphilus 
should be beheaded. Meanwhile, if she did herself 
any hurt, Antiphilus should be tortured. Thus 
hemmed in, she know not what to do. At length, 
upon a message from Antiphilus beseeching her to 
save his life, she sent a message of compliance ; but 
immediately repented, and sought counsel of the 
Princes. In ignorance of her previous message 
they issued from the city, found Tiridates negli- 
gently guarded, slew him, and brought off Antiphilus, 
who was soon married to Erona. Artaxia, aided by 
Plangus to escape, and now Queen of Armenia, "pro- 
claimed great rewards to any priuate man and her 
selfe in mariage to any Prince, that would destroy 
Pyrocles and Musidorus " ; for she considered that 
her brother had been by them treacherously slain. 

(b) (II. xxix, 227V.-233V.) Soon after Erona's 
marriage to Antiphilus, his natural baseness, together 
with the flattery of his courtiers, puffed him up with 
pride. He began to despise his wife, and feigning 
that she was barren, purposed a second marriage. 
He even, in his insolence, made polygamy legiti- 
mate, and asked for the hand of Artaxia, who hated 
both him and Erona. Infatuated by her love, Erona 
assented to all these negotiations, willing even to 
be second to Artaxia if she might only keep An- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 293 

tiphilus; and she wrote to Artaxia to speed his 
wooing. Artaxia hid her hatred in order to get 
them into her power; and appointed an interview. 
There she took Antiphilus and Erona prisoners, 
meaning to sacrifice them upon her brother's tomb. 
Antiphilus weakly begged for mercy; Erona pleaded 
only for Antiphilus. Her noble bearing, -her beauty, 
and her affliction now won the love of Plangus, 
who still in his exile sojourned at Artaxia's court. 
He declared his love, and Erona desired him to 
show it by saving Antiphilus. So he tried to- per- 
suade Artaxia to spare her prisoner, but in vain. 
Equally vain was his attempt to gather a rescuing 
army in Lycia: there the throne had already been 
usurped by the next heir, who had set the Lycians 
against their queen because of her unworthy match, 
and who now urged Artaxia to execute her. Fi- 
nally he arranged with Antiphilus to make possible 
his escape, but Antiphilus wanted the spirit to carry 
out the plan : he had a notion that if he disclosed it, 
he should be pardoned! He did disclose it, and 
begged for his life again. When Plangus came at 
the appointed time to deliver Antiphilus, Artaxia's 
troops were there ready to take Plangus, but his 
friends among the army kept him safe. As for 
Antiphilus, the women of that city begged him from 
Artaxia ; and, mortally hating him for having insti- 
tuted polygamy, forced him to throw himself down 
from the pyramid on Tiridates's tomb and so to 
end his false-hearted life. Plangus gathered his 
friends, and in an encounter defeated the troops of 
Artaxia, taking as hostage a son of Tiridates. By 
threatening to make this nephew of Artaxia suffer 
the same fate as Erona, Plangus contrived to post- 
pone Erona's execution. And now it was agreed 
that Erona was to be placed in the strong castle of 
a great nobleman for safe-keeping. If within two 
20 



294 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

years after Tiridates's death Pyrocles and Musi- 
dorus should overcome two champions chosen by 
Artaxia, Erona should be set at liberty; if not, she 
should be burned. To this, both sides took solemn 
oath; Plangus being willing because he knew the 
courtesy and prowess of those princes, who would 
surely consent to fight for Erona, but Artaxia being 
willing because Plexirtus had just informed her that 
he had caused both the princes to perish at sea. 

Plangus taking leave of the afflicted Erona, who 
wished only for death to join her to Antiphilus, 
went to Greece to notify the princes. On the way 
he intercepted letters from Artaxia to Plexirtus, 
accepting Plexirtus as her husband and alluding to 
the Princes' death in such a way that Plangus in- 
quired further in Laconia, and found that their ship 
had indeed been lost. He concluded that they must 
have perished; else their presence would surely be 
known in Greece. Now came word from Erona's 
warden, that Artaxia had broken faith and was 
besieging his castle. He could not hold out long, 
and begged Plangus to come to his aid, for now 
that Plexirtus was King of Armenia too and their 
own party consumed in the war, he felt that he could 
not resist. Plangus as a last resort determined to 
ask aid of Evarchus of Macedon, who would cer- 
tainly wish to avenge the death of his son Pyrocles. 
On his way, Plangus passed through Arcadia and 
told his story to Basilius and the princesses. 

(c) (V. 446-448) Plangus moved towards By- 
zantium, where, he understood, Evarchus after his 
victorious siege still remained. In fact, Evarchus 
had undertaken a new enterprise. The Latins were 
threatening him on the West and he was engaged 
in making all ready against them. On a progress 
through Macedon to see that his orders were car- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION *95 

ried out, he met Plangus who had turned to seek 
him at home. Plangus told him the sad news of the 
death of Pyrocles and Musidorus, and of Erona's 
plight. Evarchus swore never to return to Macedon 
till he had pursued to death the murderers of his 
nephew and his son, and at once dispatched a ship 
to Byzantium with orders to the governors to pre- 
pare for war in the East. On this ship Plangus 
sailed. But as news now came that the Latins had 
given up their purpose of war against Macedon, 
Evarchus himself with a fleet set sail for Byzan- 
tium. A storm scattered this fleet and cast his own 
ship upon the coast of Laconia. Learning there that 
after Daiphantus's departure the King of the Mace- 
donians had broken treaty with the Helots, and that 
these, again at war, hated the very name of King, 
Evarchus sought the nearest place of safety and 
hospitality, — Arcadia, the realm of his old friend 
Basilius. 

[Evarchus enters Main Plot. Episode left un- 
finished.] 

6. Plangus and Andromana 

(a) (II. xv, 166V.-171V.) Plangus, the son of 
the widowed King of Iberia, had an intrigue with 
a citizen's wife (Andromana), with whom his father 
one day found him. But Plangus convinced his 
father that she was chaste, — indeed, convinced him 
so thoroughly that he fell in love with her himself 
and sent Plangus away to the wars. During Plan- 
gus's absence her husband died, and she so managed 
the old King that by the time Plangus returned, it 
was to find her his stepmother and the mother of a 
son and a daughter by her second marriage. She 
knew him conscious of her guilt, and moreover she 
now again solicited him, but in vain; so that she 
became his bitter enemy and began to plot his ruin. 



296 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

To this end she took the help of "a seruant neere 
about her husband," an ambitious courtier who played 
on the King's fears and pretended to be himself in 
fear of Plangus. After many machinations her tool 
informed Plangus — as was indeed the fact — that his 
stepmother was conspiring with the King against 
his life; and offered to take him to a secret place 
where he might overhear them. Plangus was led 
thither, armed. When his stepmother knew he was 
there, she cried and grovelled till the King came, 
whereupon she told him with feigned reluctance 
that Plangus had solicited her, and had offered to 
kill his father and marry her as soon as he should 
be King. At that, in ran the tool, and besought 
the King to save himself, for there was one armed 
in the next room. Plangus was taken prisoner, his 
father meaning to execute him the next day. But 
a little army of his friends rescued him, and if he 
had so chosen, would have given him the crown. 
Plangus, however, chose voluntary exile at the court 
of his cousin Tiridates, King of Armenia. 

As an ally of Tiridates, Plangus besieged Erona, 
after eleven or twelve years of exile. During all 
this time his father's hatred remained unabated. 
He sent the tool to poison Plangus; and the villain 
being apprehended confessed all before his execu- 
tion. But even this confession sent in writing to 
the King failed of its effect, for he had so com- 
pletely resigned his government to his wife that she 
intercepted the document. And now Plangus's long 
absence made it possible for her to have Palladius, 
her son by her second marriage, proclaimed heir to 
the kingdom. 

(b) (II. xx, 190-xxi, 198V.) But Andromana and 
Palladius were not destined to prosper. The end of 
Pyrocles's adventure with Pamphilus and Dido 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 297 

brought the two princes Pyrocles and Musidorus to 
the Iberian court. Here Andromana fell in love 
with them, and being repulsed, imprisoned them. 
Still she allowed them to take part in the tourna- 
ment upon the anniversary of her marriage ; for 
Zelmane, who loved Pyrocles and was loved by 
Palladius, persuaded her lover to gain this favor 
for her beloved. The Princes took the opportunity 
to escape with Palladius. They routed the pursuing 
party sent by Andromana, but in the melee Pal- 
ladius was slain. Andromana killed herself upon 
his corpse. 

7, Pamphilus and Dido 

(a) (II. xviii, 181V.-185) Pamphilus was an ac- 
complished courtier and a conqueror of ladies whom 
he would deceive and then disdain. When at length 
he bethrothed himself to one (Leucippe), his former 
mistresses conspired to punish him. Inveigling him 
to a lonely spot, they set upon him and bound him 
with garters, and pricked him sore with bodkins, 
Dido showing the greatest spite and trying to put 
out his eyes. Pyrocles, just then passing on his 
way to fight Anaxius, heard Pamphilus's cries and 
put to flight all his assailants save Dido. From her 
he heard this story. When she would have returned 
to mangle Pamphilus, Pyrocles restrained her; but 
when certain friends of Pamphilus coming up would 
have killed her at Pamphilus's request, Pyrocles pro- 
tected her; so that in the end peace was promised 
faithfully on both sides, and Pyrocles rode on 

(&) (II. xix, 186-190V.) Dido on her way home 
with an insufficient guard was again attacked by 
Pamphilus and his friends, and captured. Bound 
before him on his horse and beaten by him with 
rods, she was borne towards her father Chremes s 
castle, where Pamphilus meant to kill her in her 



298 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

father's sight. On their way they passed where 
Pyrocles and Anaxius were fighting; and, in order 
to rescue Dido, Pyrocles left the combat despite the 
jeers of his enemy. He overtook the crew, from 
whom he quickly liberated her; but Pamphilus es- 
caped. Dido took Pyrocles to pass the night as the 
guest of her father, a rich miser. His unwillingness 
to maintain his daughter had driven her to the pro- 
tection of Cecropia, which, however, had exposed 
her to the arts of Pamphilus. Unwillingly admitted 
and grudgingly received by Chremes, Pyrocles upon 
Dido's inquiry told his name and estate; whereupon 
his wretched host, who knew that Artaxia had set 
a price upon the head of Pyrocles, sent word to 
the commander of an Iberian garrison near by that 
Pyrocles would next morning be betrayed into the 
commander's hands at a certain place of ambush 
agreed upon. Next day Chremes accompanied his 
guest to make sure of the success of the treachery, 
and Dido to prolong her farewell. Pyrocles was 
attacked and would have been taken but for Musi- 
dorus, who in his extremity came to the rescue. 
He had been directed thither by Chremes's neigh- 
bors, whose hatred had led them to burn his house 
during his absence, and who knew that Chremes's 
escort could bode no good to Pyrocles. The combat 
was ended by the arrival of the King of Iberia, by 
whose orders the Captain was beheaded and Chremes 
hanged. Dido, in attempting to save Pyrocles by 
placing herself between him and his enemies, had 
been slain. 

(c) (II. xxii, 199-200) Worse than death was the 
fate reserved for Pamphilus. From the lament of 
Leucippe, to whom Pamphilus had been betrothed, 
Pyrocles later learned that the inconstant one had 
deserted her too, and had married Baccha, an im- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 299 

perious wanton. Pyrocles let him live, considering 
that to kill him would rather be to spare him the 
punishment that life with such a woman would in- 
flict. Leucippe retired to a house of " Vestall 
Nunnes." 

8. Cecropia; or the Captivity 

(III. ii. 248-250V.) Six pretty country girls in- 
vite the royal party to attend rural sports at a place 
in the woods about half a mile from the lodges. 
Pamela, Philoclea, and Pyrocles (as Zelmane) go 
to the appointed place, take refreshment, and wait 
for the " devises " ; instead of which, armed men 
rush from the woods and take them prisoners before 
Zelmane can draw. Their captors place them on 
horseback and carry them to a castle upon a high 
rock in the midst of a lake, — the castle of Cecropia, 
who receives them with mock courtesy at the gate. 
They are placed in separate lodgings. 

Cecropia, going to her son Amphialus, who is still 
in bed tending the wound that Pyrocles gave him 
(II. xi, 154), tells him who are her captives. As 
he knows nothing of her wicked devices, he begs 
her to tell him the whole story. She complies 
(250V.-252V.) : 

Basilius lived unmarried till he was nearly three 
score, and led everybody to believe that he never 
would marry. So his younger brother (unnamed) 
was regarded as heir to the throne of Arcadia, and 
as such obtained the hand of Cecropia, daughter of 
the King of Argos. As Princess-Apparent she re- 
ceived great homage; and in this felicity her son 
Amphialus was born. Just when the couple had 
laid a plot to shorten the life of Basilius, her hus- 
band died. She still had much honor as mother of 
the new heir. But soon Basilius married Gynecia, 
then a young girl, and brought her to queen it over 



300 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Cecropia; nor was this all, for now the birth of 
Basilius's daughters cut off all hope of the throne 
for Amphialus, and stripped Cecropia of her honors. 
She tried several ways to destroy the house of 
Arcadia: it was she that let loose the lion and the 
bear that attacked the Princesses; it was she that 
procured Clinias to stir up the recent insurrection; 
and the leader of the supposed country girls who 
had just enticed the Princesses into her hands was 
her protogee Artesia, disguised. Had it not been 
that Amphialus loved Philoclea, Cecropia would, she 
says, already have had the Princesses killed. As it 
is, he may easily have his will, for his mistress is 
his captive. 

(III. iii, 253-255V.) The gallant Amphialus depre- 
cates his mother's course, requires that Zelmane, 
though his enemy, be honorably treated, and goes 
to plead his cause with Philoclea. Though he admits 
that by not redressing her injury he makes himself 
an accessory to it, yet he deprecates her anger, and 
blames all on the tyrant Love. She refuses to yield ; 
he vows that no violence shall be used ; she threatens 
to kill herself if her honor be jeoparded. 

(III. iv, 256-259V.) Amphialus departs to prepare 
for the siege he knows he must stand. Throughout 
all his activity Love harasses him, with many con- 
tradictions and antitheses, till at length he asks his 
mother to intercede for him. 

(III. v, 260-262V.) Cecropia finds Philoclea weep- 
ing, and rallies her upon spoiling her beauty. With 
much sophistry she leads up to her plea for Am- 
phialus; and when Philoclea answers that she has 
vowed virginity, proceeds to set forth the joys of 
matrimony. Philoclea replies that she cannot con- 
sider any proposal as long as she is a prisoner. So 
(III. vi, 263-265V.) the conference ends. Now Ce- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 3 01 

cropia bethinks her that Pamela may be more tract- 
able, and that if so, Amphialus may be content with 
her instead. Going to Pamela's door Cecropia listens 
and overhears Pamela praying for a mind steadfast, 
pure, and to the will of God submiss. Abashed by 
her captive's virtue, Cecropia yet attempts her, too, 
with eloquence and gifts, but in vain. 

(Ill vii, 266V.-III. ix, 277) Now follow alarums 
and excursions; of which the chief incidents are an 
indecisive combat between Amphialus and a Black 
Knight (=Musidorus) and the capture of Philanax, 
who is afterward released by Amphialus at the 
prayer of Philoclea. 

Cecropia continues to woo both the Princesses sepa- 
rately " determining that whome she coulde winne 
first the other shoulde (without her sonnes knowl- 
edge) by poyson be made away." Today, having 
vainly tried to persuade Philoclea by praising Am- 
phialus for his mercy (III. x, 278-284) to Philanax, 
Cecropia goes to Pamela, who refutes all Cecropia s 
atheistic arguments. 

Meanwhile Basilius slowly prosecutes the siege 
(III. xi, 284V.-289V.), and the sallies of Amphialus 
are vain. Phalantus now challenges any gentleman 
on Amphialus's side to single combat; Amphialus 
accepts the challenge, fights him incognito van- 
quishes but spares him, and exchanges with him 
pledges of friendship. 

(III. xii, 289V.-296) Cecropia lays before Philo- 
clea this victory as a homage from Amphialus, who 
now proclaims a general challenge. When he has 
defeated and killed many of the King's bravest 
champions, the King sends for Argalus. Him the 
messenger finds with Parthenia-a pair of wedded 
lovers; but Argalus putting aside his wife s remon- 
stances goes at the call of duty. In a terrible com- 



30* THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

bat Amphialus at last gives Argalus a mortal 
wound. Parthenia receives her husband's dying 
breath. He is buried with military pomp; she is 
inconsolable. 

(III. xiii, 296V.-301) Clinias's reputation for 
cowardice has reached the ears of Dametas, who 
thinks to gain honor cheaply by challenging him. 
Egged on by several young gentlemen, he sends his 
challenge, which Amphialus compels Clinias to ac- 
cept. The two cowards meet in the island, where 
retreat is impossible, and fight a comical combat, in 
which by accident Dametas gains the victory. 

(III. xiv, 301-304) The consequent disgrace to 
Clinias sets him plotting vengeance against Am- 
phialus. To this end he finds an ally in Artesia, 
who, having been induced to entrap the Princesses 
by the prospect that they should be killed and that 
she should then marry Amphialus, now sees herself 
scorned for the sake of one of those very Princesses 
whom she herself has brought thither. Artesia, 
ready for anything, confides in Zelmane, who wishes 
no more than to be provided with a sword; but 
Clinias is for opening a gate to the enemy and for 
having Amphialus poisoned. Clinias and Artesia 
agree upon the latter plan, and decide to disclose it 
to the Princesses in order to be saved by them from 
the fury of the entering soldiers, and to secure to 
themselves future reward. Clinias therefore tells 
Philoclea, who be^s him to give up the plan, but 
promises not to betray him. Artesia tells Pamela, 
who loudly denounces both the plan and the traitress. 
Cecropia overhearing the conversation inquires what 
it is all about, and is referred to Artesia, who under 
threat of torture confesses all. Clinias is executed, 
Artesia locked up in her chamber. 

(III. xv, 304V-III. xvi ? 31 iv.) The proud Anax- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 303 

ius, after several fights with Amphialus, has on one 
occasion saved his life and has consequently become 
his friend. Searching for Pyrocles to finish their 
combat (see b; II. xix, 186), Anaxius has heard 
of the siege and now comes to aid Amphialus. With 
his two strong brothers, Lycurgus and Zoilus, he 
breaks through Basilius's camp from the rear, but 
is being repulsed by Philanax, when Amphialus also 
sallies forth, takes one of Basilius's outposts, and 
receives Anaxius and his brothers. 

The "Knight of the Tomb," challenges Am- 
phialus but will not reveal his identity. In the 
fight, Amphialus wounds him mortally, and pulling 
off his helmet reveals Parthenia. With the words 
" I come, I come, my Argalus," she dies. Amid the 
lamentations of all she is buried in the same tomb 
with Argalus. 

(III. xvii, 312-314) Amphialus retires in deep 
melancholy, breaks his sword, and recalls his fate 
in killing against his will both Philoxenus and Par- 
thenia, and in keeping Philoclea captive without any 
chance of success. Cecropia rallies him upon his 
soft-heartedness, and counsels violence. 

(III. xviii, 314V.-III. xix, 325V.) A challenge from 
the " Forsaken Knight " is delivered and accepted. 
Amphialus meets upon the island his adversary, who 
is no other than the Black Knight (=Musidorus). 
There ensues a tremendous battle, in which each 
wounds the other so sorely that Amphialus falls in 
a swoon, and Musidorus is driven by his faintness 
to give over fighting. He is taken away unconscious 
and kept secretly in a castle near by to recover of 
his wounds. Cecropia finding herself in full control 
as long as her son is disabled, resolves to force the 
Princesses' consent. First, to rid herself of con- 
straint from without, she announces to Basilius that 



304 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

if he does not raise the siege she will cause the three 
prisoners to be beheaded before his eyes; and she 
places a scaffold on the walls, where she exhibits 
the captives ready for execution. The King decides 
to raise the siege. Leaving Philanax in general 
charge, Basilius retires to a castle with the Queen. 

(III. xx, 325V -III. xxi, 332) After again trying 
flattery and suasion upon the Princesses, Cecropia 
resorts first to threats, then to indignities, then to 
hardships, and at length to scourgings and other 
bodily tortures. All is vain: Philoclea begs only 
for death; Pamela will not even do so much. Ce- 
cropia resolves to break the resolution of the one 
by threatening the death of the other if she will not 
yield. Philoclea, unmoved by this threat, only asks 
that she herself be chosen for execution. Cecropia 
refuses, and bids her prepare to see Pamela be- 
headed. Zelmane and Philoclea looking inward 
upon the hall of the castle from the windows of their 
chambers, behold the execution of a lady dressed 
in Pamela's clothes, but with most of her face cov- 
ered (really Artesia: III. xxiii, 339). 

(III. xxii, 332V.-336V.) Learning of the attach- 
ment between Zelmane and Philoclea, Cecropia 
threatens Zelmane that unless she persuades Philo- 
clea to yield, Philoclea shall also be beheaded. 
After a night of conflicting emotions and councils, 
Zelmane resolves that Philoclea's life must be saved 
at all costs; and advises her to feign submission; 
in consideration whereof he may be set at liberty 
and perchance get a sword. Submission may also 
gain delay which will give him the opportunity to 
gather a rescuing force. But she firmly declines all 
dissimulation. 

Roused by an unusual noise in the night, Zelmane 
goes to the window overlooking the hall and sees 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 305 

there upon the scaffold Philoclea's head in a bloody- 
basin. In his frenzy he tries to brain himself against 
the wall, but slips and falls into a swoon; whence 
recovering he resolves to live for vengeance, and 
laments most grievously. 

(III. xxiii, 337— III. xxiv, 343V.) About dawn as 
he lies tossing on his bed he hears a rustling in his 
room, and a voice answers his challenge. It is Philo- 
clea's, who explains that neither she nor Pamela is 
dead: Artesia it was who was executed in Pamela's 
dress ; and Philoclea's living head was thrust through 
a hole in the bottom of a basin. Now, owing per- 
haps to Amphialus's discovering, despite his mother's 
secrecy, something of her treatment of the Prin- 
cesses, Philoclea and Pamela have been allowed 
together and Philoclea has been allowed to come to 
Zelmane. The lovers mingle their joy and their 
tears. Philoclea returns to Pamela's chamber, where 
soon Amphialus appears. Kept in the dark by his 
mother, he has nevertheless had misgivings about 
her treatment of the captives. Now Pamela's words 
leave him in no doubt. By threatening torture, he 
gets the dreadful details from one of his mother's 
women. In despair he seizes a sword, meaning to 
kill himself in the sight of his mother, who is on 
the leads of the castle meditating how she may 
secretly poison the Princesses. When she sees him 
coming she thinks his drawn sword meant for her, 
and retreating hastily, falls to the ground. Even 
as she dies, she directs that the Princesses be killed, 
but none obeys. Amphialus recalls his evil destiny 
in causing the deaths of Philoxenus, Timotheus, 
Parthenia, Ismenus, and his own mother, and in 
procuring the torture of his beloved. He falls upon 
his sword, which slipping kills him not. His old 
wounds reopen, and with Philoclea's knives he stabs 
himself. He is taken up almost dead. 
21 



306 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

(III. xxv, 344-248V.) Anaxius takes command of 
the castle, forces the inmates to swear allegiance to 
him, and vows he will kill the Princesses as causers 
of his friend's death. Queen Helen of Corinth ar- 
rives and with Anaxius's permission takes away the 
almost lifeless body of Amphialus to be cured by a 
surgeon of her own. 

(III. xxvi, 349V.-352V.) Anaxius announces to the 
Princesses that upon his return from escorting 
Queen Helen he will cut off their heads. They face 
him with fortitude. At the sight of Pamela's beauty 
he pauses, and receives from Zelmane a challenge to 
mortal combat. At this, as coming from a woman, 
he smiles; whereupon Zelmane declares herself the 
equal of Pyrocles who slew Anaxius's uncle Evardes, 
nay, the closest possible kinsman to that same Pyro- 
cles, and invites Anaxius to avenge upon her the 
wrongs he considers Pyrocles to have done him: 
otherwise Zelmane brands him as a dastard. Though 
Anaxius declines the challenge he yet of his own 
accord spares the lives of the Princesses, and makes 
odious love to Pamela. Summarily rejected, he goes 
away for the time, leaving Lycurgus to court Philo- 
clea and Zoilus to court Zelmane. 

(III. xxvii, 353-355V.) When the brothers are 
gone, Zelmane persuades the Princesses to gain 
time by promising to yield if Basilius shall consent. 
Accordingly, Anaxius sends a flattering messenger 
to the King, who, irresolute, again refers the ques- 
tion to Apollo's oracle. This time the answer comes 
plain: He is to deny his daughters to their present 
suitors, for they are reserved for such as are better 
beloved of the Gods ; he is to have no fear, for they 
will return to him safely and speedily; he is to con- 
tinue his retired life until both he and Phiianax 
agree as to the meaning of the former prophecy. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 307 

Anaxius's messenger takes back a resolute negative, 
which he dresses up flatteringly to tell his master. 
Anaxius, however, resolves to use violence; but, 
word being brought of the approach of an armed 
force, he orders the soldiers to the walls, and with 
his brothers remains within to carry out his intent. 

(III. xxviii, 356— III. xxix, 360V.) Zoilus an- 
nounces to the Princesses a version of Basilius's 
answer distorted so as to appear favorable, and pro- 
ceeds towards Zelmane, who begs that he allow her 
to perform a vow of hers never to marry but such 
an one as can withstand her in arms. Turning this 
to a jest, he tries to embrace her; she trips him up, 
takes his sword from him, pursues him to the pres- 
ence of his brothers, and there kills him. Anaxius 
disdainfully leaving to Lycurgus the task of revenge, 
goes down and locks that part of the castle off from 
the rest. Zelmane snatches a shield from the wall 
and quickly induces Lycurgus to beg mercy. She 
would grant it did she not see on his arm a garter 
which she has given Philoclea, and which Lycurgus 
has forced from her. At that she runs him through, 
just as Anaxius returns. Anaxius and Zelmane 
fight till both are out of breath, and having rested, 
resume the fight. 

[End of quarto of 1590. The later eds. continue 
the story, after a gap. See F.~\ 



Reduced to lowest terms, the "Arcadia" 
amounts to this : Having received a paradoxical 
oracle, a king endeavors to prevent its accom- 
plishment ; nevertheless the oracle is accom- 
plished, and under circumstances issuing in the 
following catastrophe: at a public spectacular 
trial, a father not knowing his own son condemns 



308 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

him to death ; the son's identity is declared by a 
deus ex machina who arrives just in time; 
women's chastity is vindicated; and the conclu- 
sion is a double marriage of princely lovers, the 
vicissitudes of whose Fortune have been so 
ordered by Providence as to unite them at last. 
It is evident that we have here the grandiose 
Heliodorean framework. 11 The attribution to 
Greek Romance is confirmed by detailed exami- 
nation of several motifs and incidents of this 
plot, as well as several of its episodes. 

Not especially attributable to any one of the 
Greek Romances is Sidney's employment of the 
stock incidents of shipwreck (Li; II. vii) and 
of what Herr Brunhuber (p. 22) calls " Das Eros 
Motiv " : — A youth or maid who formerly scoffed 
at Love becomes the slave of Love. So it was 
with Clitophon before he met Leucippe, so with 
Rhodopis and Euthynicus before they met (A. 
T., I. vii ; VIII. xii), so with Theagenes and with 
Chariclea (y£th., II. xxxiii). So it is with 
Musidorus, who, before he has seen Pamela, 
sharply reproves the love of Pyrocles for Philo- 
clea (Arc, I. xii, 51 v.) and later falls a victim 
himself, affording Sidney opportunity for a richly 
humorous scene (Arc, I. xviii, yyv. ; see post 
p. 330). So it is too, and seriously, with Erona, 
whose sad story (Arc, II. xiii, 159V.) begins with 
her ill-starred love for Antiphilus, — a punishment 

la If external evidence that Sidney knew the "iEthiopica " 
were needed, it would be supplied by the allusions in his 
" Apologie for Poetrie " (ed. Collins) : "... so true a 
louer as Theagenes " (p. 8) ; " Heliodorus in his sugred 
inuention of that picture of loue in Theagenes and Chari- 
clea" (p. 12). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 309 

inflicted upon her by Cupid for her sacrilege in 
seeking to abolish his cult. 2 

More definite is the provenance of the follow- 
ing incidents. Musidorus (Arc, III. 347) tells 
how " Pamela, upon his vehement oath to offer 
no force unto her, till hee had invested her in 
the Dutchie of Thessalia, had condescended to 
his stealing her away to the next sea port." 
Lovers elope in both Heliodorus and Achilles 
Tatius; but only in Heliodorus does their vow 
of chastity precede the elopement; and only in 
Heliodorus does it look to their formal entry 
into a kingdom. In the "Arcadia" as in the 
"yEthiopica " this abduction is structural: it is 
essential to the main plot, and leads through the 
capture of the lovers, straight to the denouement, 
where it figures as one of the charges brought 
against Theagenes and against Musidorus alike. 

Again, in each denouement, as has been briefly 
noted (ante, p. 307), a father condemns to death 
his own child, restored to him after many wan- 
derings; in each, the father is unaware of the 
identity of the child, who maintains a preter- 
natural silence on this point ; in each, the recogni- 
tion is brought about by the arrival, in the nick 
of time, of a person (Charicles, Calodoulos) who 
has travelled from a distance to the place of trial. 
If Calodoulos were a priest, the parallel would be 
complete. 

Several minor incidents and situations in the 
" Arcadia," less structural than the foregoing, are 
no less unmistakably borrowed from the 

8 Herr Brunhuber (p. 22) mentions the case of Erona. 



3IO THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

"^Ethiopica." Herr Brunhuber (p. 20) calls at- 
tention to one of them — an incident of the previ- 
ous history of Pyrocles : his leadership of the in- 
surgent Helots (Arc, I. vi, 28; I. viii, 34V.), 
parallel to Thyamis's leadership of the Herdsmen. 
The parallel is repeated in the case of Demagoras 
(Arc, I. v) perhaps somewhat more closely, for 
both Demagoras and Thyamis have been ban- 
ished before they become captains of outlaws. 

Another situation which Sidney has used twice 
is in Heliodorus's passage (yEth., V. iii) about 
the nocturnal fright of Cnemon: overhearing 
Chariclea's soliloquy in which she names herself 
Thisbe, Cnemon is panic-stricken, and beats a 
hasty retreat in the dark, groping and stumbling 
and bumping his head and stubbing his toes till he 
reaches his own chamber. So Pyrocles (Arc, 
III. 353) in the darkness of a cave overhears a 
woman soliloquizing and at last naming herself — 
Gynecia ; he retreats in a panic, and stumbling in 
the dark makes so much noise that she discovers 
him. Again (Arc, III. 379), Basilius about to 
go to his rendezvous with Zelmane, waits eagerly 
till he thinks his wife asleep; then "he came 
darkeling into his chamber, forcing himselfe to 
tread as softly as hee could. But the more curi- 
ous he was, the more he thought everything 
creaked under him, and ... his eyes not seruing 
his turne in that darke place, each Coffer or Cup- 
bord hee met, one saluted his shinnes, another his 
elbowes." 

In order to make clear the borrowings next to 
be mentioned, a preliminary observation is neces- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 311 

sary. For the travels of the two lovers in Greek 
Romance, Sidney substitutes the travels of the 
two princely friends and kinsmen who are his 
heroes. The substitution probably is due to 
mediaeval influence, particularly that of the 
" Legend of Two Friends " (see ante p. 250; post, 
p. 364 n. 37) and of the romances of chivalry; 3 
and offers Sidney a chance to lead his heroes on 
a tour of knight-errantry through Asia. But at 
the same time this is his " Reiseroman " ; and it is 
diversified with the usual incidents of these wan- 
derings. Like the Greek lovers, the friends are 
shipwrecked (Arc, I. i; II. vii) ; just as pirates 
capture the lady in Greek Romance, and separate 
her from her lover, so do pirates capture one 
of the friends and keep him for awhile from 
his fellow (Arc, I. i) ; and as the lovers are 
imprisoned together, so are the friends (i£th., 
VIII. x; Arc, IV. 433; II. xx, 192V.). 

Narrative material from Heliodorus is used by 
Sidney for three of his episodes. In the 
"yEthiopica " (VII. xviii, xxi, xxv) Theagenes 
and Chariclea are the prisoners of Arsace, who 
desires him. He is tortured, and threatened with 
death if he will not yield. Chariclea advises him 
to feign compliance in order to gain time. He 
refuses to dissemble. In Sidney's episode of 
the Captivity (Arc, III. xxii, 333~334v.) Pyro- 

8 For Sidney's borrowings from " Amadis of Gaul " — the 
chief portions of the episodes of Phalantus and Artesia 
and of Pamphilus and Dido ; the fight of Musidorus and 
Ismenus about the armor of Amphialus ; the disguise of 
Pyrocles, and his double qui-pro-quo with Basilius and 
Gynecia — see Moody, pp. 34-47 ; Brunhuber, pp. 14-191 and 
post, pp. 318-319. 



312 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

cles and Philoclea are the prisoners of Amphia- 
lus, who desires her. She is tortured, and 
threatened with death if she will not yield. 
Pyrocles advises her to feign compliance in order 
to gain time. She refuses to dissemble. 

In the other two cases Heliodorus furnishes the 
main body of Sidney's whole episode. The first 
is the episode of the " Paphlagonica " or " Gala- 
tica" (Arc, II. x, 143V.-146), founded upon 
Heliodorus's story of Calasiris, Petosiris, and 
Thyamis (JEth., I. xix; VII. ii, vi, viii, xi) : 
One of two brothers (Petosiris; Plexirtus) by 
slander usurps the birthright of the other 
(Thyamis; Leonatus), causes his banishment, and 
attempts his life. Their father too (Calasiris; 
unnamed King of Paphlagonia) goes into exile. 
The injured brother returns to his native country, 
fights for and regains his birthright, and forgives 
the usurper. The father also returns, formally 
invests the true heir with his rights, and im- 
mediately dies. Sidney added greatly to the 
point and pathos of Heliodorus's tale by having 
the King himself turned against the good son and 
seeking his life; by having the King blinded by 
the wicked son; and by inventing the passage 
where the old man begs to be led to the top of 
a rock that he may end his life by leaping down. 
Sidney also ministered to the surviving mediaeval 
and chivalric ideas of his time by making the 
wicked son a bastard. He thus somewhat recast 
his original, or at least gave it a tone foreign to 
Heliodorus. Probably it was this new tone which 
attracted Shakespeare, who, in the underplot of 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 313 

Gloucester and his sons, in "King Lear," re- 
tained, though with changes again, the features 
which Sidney added, and added besides much 
new matter of his own. The result is a complete 
transformation of the plot and personages of the 
Greek Romance. In Shakespeare's underplot, 
and in the characters of Gloucester, Edgar and 
Edmund, it is difficult to trace any part of the 
story as told in the "^Ethiopica," or to recognize 
the old priest of Memphis and his two sons. 

The third of Sidney's episodes shows still 
greater indebtedness to Heliodorus. It is the 
episode of Plangus and Andromana, derived from 
the stories of Heliodorus's two amorous women, 
Demaeneta and Arsace. 4 Andromana combines 
these in her own story and character. Like 
Demaeneta (^Eth., I. x-xvii), she solicits her 
stepson (Cnemon; Plangus), and being rejected 
ruins him by means of low intrigue in which she 
employs a servant as her tool (Thisbe ; unnamed). 
In each case the stepmother slanders the son to 
his father. In each case she arranges a ren- 
dezvous in the dark, where the son is made to 
appear as an intended parricide. In each case the 
son is exiled ; and the intriguing servant later 
confesses and dies. Like Arsace, Andromana at 
another time is in love with two of the heroes of 
the story (Theagenes and Thyamis; Pyrocles and 
Musidorus) — the affairs being successive in the 
'TEthiopica," simultaneous in the "Arcadia." 
Rejected by both heroes, she vainly tries the effect 
of imprisonment and continued solicitation. 

4 Oeftering, p. 94, and Brunhuber, p. 20, recognize in it 
the story of Demaeneta only. 



3H THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Finally, like both Arsace and Demaeneta, Andro- 
mana kills herself. — The derivation of Andro- 
mana and her story from a deliberate combination 
of Arsace and Demaeneta is corroborated by the 
history of the growth of this episode under Sid- 
ney's hand (post, p. 348 ff.). 

It is from Achilles Tatius that Sidney takes his 
other amorous woman, Queen Gynecia. Her 
fully rounded character, 5 among the compara- 
tively pale types surrounding her, would lead the 
reader to suspect her kinship with Melitta. The 
suspicion is confirmed by parallel incidents. Her 
passionate pleading for the love of Pyrocles 
(Arc, III. 353-4, 365-7; cf. A. T., V. xxv, xxvi) 
at length results in a promise of compliance — a 
promise of which Pyrocles, like Clitophon, puts 
off the fulfilment, and which, again like Clito- 
phon, he means not to fulfil. In Clitophon's case 
this intention is melted by Melitta's flame, while 
Pyrocles remains steadfast; but Clitophon and 
Pyrocles each exchange garments with their re- 
spective innamoratas; and each is afterward 
arrested in these garments (A. T., VI. i, iii, v; 
Arc, III. 378, 408, 423). 

Other incidents or situations borrowed from 
Achilles Tatius are the following: Pyrocles at a 
feast with Philoclea, like Clitophon at his first 
meal with Leucippe, can look only at her. His 
eyes, he confesses later (Arc, I. xiv, 62V.; cf. 
A. T., I. iv, v. ix; II. ix; V. xiii) " dranke much 
more eagerly of her beautie, then my mouth did 

8 " Unter den vielen Charakteren, die haufig jede psy- 
chologische Vertief ung vermissen lassen, ragt nur die starke 
Personlichkeit Gynecias hervor." — Brunhuber, p. 9. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 315 

of any other licour. And ... as I dranke the 
wine, and withall stole a looke on her, me seemed 
I tasted her deliciousnesse." 

The heroic spectacle, and the spectacular 
heroics, of shipwrecked Pyrocles riding the waves 
upon a mast (Arc, I. 4V.-5), Sidney elaborated 
from the similar passage about Clinias (A. T., 
III. v). Musidorus and the Laconian shepherds 
sail out towards the wreck to recover Pyrocles ; 
when " Vpon the mast they saw a yong man . . . 
his haire . . . stirred vp and down with the wind 
. . . himselfe full of admirable beautie, set 
foorth by the strangenes both of his seate and 
gesture : for, holding his head up full of vnmoued 
maiestie, he held a sworde aloft with his faire 
arme, which often he waued about his crowne 
as though he would threaten the world in that 
extremitie." 

The rescuers (Arc, I. i, 5-5 v.) sail towards 
Pyrocles, " when one of the saylers descried a 
Galley which came with sayles and oares directlie 
in the chase of them; and streight perceaued it 
was a well knowne Pirate. . . . Which when the 
Maister vnderstood, he commanded forthwith to 
set on all the canuasse they could, and flie home- 
ward, leaving in that sort poore Pyrocles so neere 
to be reskewed. But what did not Musidorus 
say? What did he not offer to perswade them 
to venture the fight ? " In vain ; the captain turns 
back. — This incident is closely parallel to that in 
A. T., V. vii : The governor of Pharos, with Clito- 
phon, puts out to rescue Leucippe; but at the 
approach of a galley full of pirates he returns to 
shore despite the entreaties of Clitophon. 



316 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

When the two Princes are returning from Asia, 
Plexirtus commissions the Captain of their ship 
to murder them. The Captain resists all attempts 
to dissuade him, and Sidney explains this bloody- 
mindedness by recalling the fact that he "had 
bene a pyrate from his youth, and often blouded 
in it" (Arc, II. xxiv, 210). Similarly, the action 
of Chaereas in hiring pirates to kidnap Leucippe, 
is explained by his earlier association with the 
pirates of Pharos (A. T., IV. xviii; V. iii). 

In Sidney's episode of the Princesses' captivity, 
the brutal Anaxius, forcing his caresses upon 
Pamela, takes her by the chin (Arc, III. xxvi, 
352). "Putting him away with her faire hand, 
Proud beast (said she) yet thou plaiest worse thy 
Comedy, then thy Tragedy." Thersander, forc- 
ing his caresses upon Leucippe, also takes her by 
the chin, and also receives a sharp reproof (A. 
T., VI. xviii). 

Achilles Tatius's trick of a pretended execu- 
tion, which he employs twice (A. T., III. xv; V. 
vii), Sidney employs three times, — twice in this 
episode of the Captivity, again in the episode of 
Antiphilus and Erona. 6 To make Philoclea yield 
her hand to Amphialus, Cecropia threatens to be- 
head Pamela; and actually has beheaded before 
Philoclea's eyes a woman dressed in Pamela's 
clothes. This is Artesia (Arc, III. xxi, 331). 
The original is evidently the pretended decapita- 
tion of Leucippe. To induce Pyrocles to persuade 
Philoclea to yield, Cecropia has him informed that 
unless he succeeds in this persuasion, Philoclea 
shall die. The attempt at persuasion proving vain, 

'This indebtedness is noticed by Brunhuber, p. 21. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 317 

Cecropia lets Pyrocles see a bloody basin contain- 
ing Philoclea's head. In fact this is Philoclea's 
living head thrust through a hole in the bottom 
of the basin (Arc, III. xxii, 332V., 335). Erona 
being in love with the low-born Antiphilus, " Many 
wayes her father sought to withdraw her from 
it ; . . . lastly, making a solemne execution to be 
dene of another, under the name of Antiphilus, 
whom he kept in prison" (Arc, II. xiii, 150/v.). 

To return to the denouement of the main plot, 
— Achilles Tatius contributes several important 
elements to Sidney's Heliodorean trial scene. At 
the trial in " Clitophon and Leucippe " (A. T., 
VII. vi-xiii; V. iii, ix) Clitophon, wishing to die, 
accuses himself of the murder of Leucippe and is 
condemned to death. She is all the while alive, 
and is part of the time present in court ! In the 
same bizarre fashion, Gynecia, so overwhelmed 
with a sense of guilt that she wishes to die, ac- 
cuses herself of the murder of Basilius and is 
condemned to death. He is all the while alive, 
and present in court — in a trance ! And so, too, 
the Princes must plead to the charge of having 
murdered this living man : a situation foretold by 
the oracle (Arc, II. xxviii, 225V.). Moreover, 
the multiplicity of charges against Pyrocles — 
rape, murder, and adultery, — makes the opening 
of Thersander's invective against Clitophon (A. 
T., VIII. vii) a model which Sidney can follow 
closely in the opening of Philanax's invective 
against Pyrocles (Arc, V. 464) : " That which all 
men, who take upon them to accuse another, are 
wont to desire . . . to haue many proofes of 



3*8 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

faults in them they seeke to haue condemned: 
that is to me in this present action, my greatest 
comber, and annoyance. For the number is so 
great, and the qualities so monstrous, of the 
enormities this wretched yong man hath com- 
mitted, that neither I my selfe can tell where to 
begin (my thoughts being confused with the hor- 
rible multitude of them) neither doe I think your 
vertuous eares will be able to endure the report." 
The double rendezvous of Pyrocles with the 
king and the queen, and the double qui-pro-quo 
by which he leaves them together, were perhaps 
suggested by three separate passages of " Amadis 
of Gaul" 7 : (a) In Bk. XI, cap. 3, Agesilan of 
Colchos, who, like Sidney's Pyrocles, has been 
reared with his cousin, falls in love, like Pyrocles 
again, with the picture of Diana, daughter of 
Queen Sidonia. Upon his cousin's advice he as- 
sumes female disguise in order to enter Sidonia's 
service; and he now calls himself Daraide. (b) 
In Bk. XI, cap. 83, he has reached the land of 
Galdap. Here he is taken captive by King Gali- 
nidis, to whose Queen, Salderne, he yields his 
sword. He gives himself out as a maiden from 
Sarmatia, and both King and Queen proceed to 
fall in love with him. As Daraide refuses to yield 
to the Queen, she has him thrown into prison, 
(c) In Bk. IX, cap. 3, Arlande, Princess of 
Thrace, having fallen in love with Florisel de 
Niquea, who loves the shepherdess Silvia and re- 

T As I have not read the later books of the " Amadis," I 
follow Herr Brunhuber, pp. 16-18. Mr. Moody, however, 
was, I believe, the first to point out Sidney's borrowings 
from the " Amadis." 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 319 

jects Arlande's advances, visits him at night in 
the garments of Silvia, and is welcomed. 

That Sidney combined (a) and (b) (rejecting, 
of course, the imprisonment) to make the situa- 
tion in which Pyrocles finds himself with relation 
to Basilius and Gynecia, seems likely enough. 
But as a suggestion of the way out of that situa- 
tion, a suggestion for his ruse, (c) does not seem 
so plausible as the story of Cnemon (Mth., I. 
ix-xvii, esp. xv-xvii), which possesses at least 
this additional point of similarity to the ruse of 
Pyrocles: a wife expecting a gallant, is found by 
her husband. With this, Sidney needed only to 
compound a theme that stared him in the face 
from a hundred fabliaux and novelle: a husband 
expecting his mistress finds his wife. The com- 
bination produces the ruse of Pyrocles. But the 
whole question is exceedingly doubtful, for the 
very reason that the novella-literature of the Re- 
naissance is so full of qui-pro-quo's. 

Whatever its source, the inclusion of the whole 
story in the frame of Greek Romance rests on 
surer ground. The female disguise of Pyrocles, 
and the escapade of Basilius and Gynecia, even 
supposing them to have been suggested by the 
"Amadis," are both of them, together with the 
bizarreries of the trial-scene, which are taken 
from Achilles Tatius, predicted by the oracle : 

" Thy elder care shall from thy careful face 1 
By princely meane be stolne, and yet not lost. } 
Thy younger shall with Natures blisse embrace ) 
An uncouth loue, which nature hateth most. ) 



.1 



320 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Both they themselues vnto such two shall wed 
Who at thy beer, as at a barre, shall plead 
Why thee (a liuing man) they had made dead 
In thy owne seate a forraine state shall sit. 
And ere that all these blowes thy head do hit 
Thou with thy wife adultry shall commit." 

(Arc, II. xxviii, 225V.) 

(1), as has been seen, is the elopement of 
Pamela and Musidorus, as in the "JEthiopica " ; 
(2), the love of Philoclea for a supposed maiden, 
may have been suggested by the " Amadis " ; (3) 
is from Achilles Tatius; and (4) possibly sug- 
gested by Heliodorus's story of Cnemon, though 
this is doubtful. But the point is that Sidney has 
conceived his story in the frame of Greek Ro- 
mance — the Romance of Heliodorus; and that, 
whencesoever he derives his material, he keeps it 
within that frame by including it in the oracle, — 
the announcement of the intentions of Providence 
regarding his personages. 

The point is made clearer by a consideration of 
the motive forces of the main plot, — Providence, 
Fortune, and the like. Sidney's own opinion of 
oracles would appear to be embodied in the letter 
of Philanax to Basilius touching this one (Arc, 
I. iv, 14V.) : " Wisdome and vertue be the only 
destinies appointed to me to follow, whece we 
ought to seeke al our Knowledge. . . . These kind 
of soothsayers [i. e., oracles] ... be nothing but 
fansie, wherein there must either be vanitie, or 
infalliblenes, & so, either not to be respected, or 
not to be preuented." That is, the prediction is 
either false, and therefore to be disregarded, or 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 32 1 

true, and therefore inevitable: in either case, 
oracles are to be eschewed. In fact, the fulfilment 
of the oracle is, as it were, a punishment in- 
flicted upon Basilius for consulting an oracle at 
all. For the prediction is fulfilled by the very 
course that he takes to prevent its fulfilment. 
Had he remained at court, and allowed princely 
suitors access to his daughters, the one would 
not have needed to be "by princely meane . . . 
stolne"; the other would not have embraced an 
apparently unnatural love, for Pyrocles would 
not have needed to disguise himself as a woman 
in order to court her; and for the same reason 
there would have been no Zelmane for Basilius 
to fall in love with, and hence no rendezvous, no 
qui-pro-quo, no adultery, no potion, no apparent 
death of the King, and no trial of the princes at 
his bier. As Kalander says (I. iv, 16) in com- 
menting upon the King's retirement : " The cause 
of all hath beene the vanitie which possesseth 
many, who . . . are desirous to know the cer- 
taintie of things to come." The same sentiments 
are repeated in comment upon the full text of the 
oracle (II. xxviii, 225V.-226). Providence will 
work out its plans either way : if not searched into 
or resisted, then perhaps smoothly; if searched 
into and resisted, — as here, — then ironically and 
with pain to men. 

The arrangement by which the Princes are 
brought to their destined wives is part of this 
providential plan. At their birth it is predicted 
(II. vi, 128V.-129) that they will conquer certain 
Asiatic Kingdoms. The Kings of these lands 



322 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

therefore invade Macedonia; hence Pyrocles is 
sent to be reared with his cousin in Thessaly; 
hence, too, Evarchus makes war in the East. It 
is on their way to join him at Byzantium that the 
Princes are shipwrecked on the coast of Asia; 
their tour of the East follows, 8 involving inci- 
dentally the conquests predicted for them ; and it 
is on their way back to Greece that they are ship- 
wrecked on the coast of Laconia, whence Pyro- 
cles, after his adventures with pirates and Helots, 
is conducted to Kalander's house, and, falling in 
love with the portrait of Philoclea, resolves to go 
to her lodge in the Arcadian woods. This is 
hardly the nearest way from Thessaly to Arcadia ; 
but 'twill serve; and the chain is complete, with 
Fortune intervening only here and there, to con- 
duct such minor matters as shipwrecks and pira- 
cies — her immemorial prerogative. After the 
Princes have joined the royal party in the forest, 
the control of Providence is further manifested 
in Gynecia's dream (II. xxv, 212V.-213), and in 
the second oracle to Basilius (III. xxvii, 354V.) 
which bids him " to denie his daughters to Anax- 
ius and his brothers, for that they were reserued 
for such as were better beloved of the gods." 

The providential plot thickens, as it were, to- 
ward the close. When the remnants of the rebel 
band, hiding in the forest, happen upon the elop- 
ing Musidorus and Pamela (IV. 426), the en- 

8 In the course of this tour, the Princes, beset by Plex- 
irtus with overwhelming numbers and about to be over- 
come, are saved by the opportune arrival of the King of 
Pontus (II. x, 145) whom a dream ha9 sent to their assist- 
ance. Evidently, supernatural powers are taking care of 
them. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 323 

counter is by no means the work of chance. 
"They were guided by the euerlasting Iustice, 
vsing themselues to be punishers of their faults, 
and making their owne actions the beginning of 
their chastizements . . ." Evarchus having ar- 
rived in Arcadia, Philanax says (V. 445) : 
" Surely, surely the heavenly powers have in so 
full a time bestowed him on vs, to vnite our 
diuisions." At the trial (V. 458), "So extraor- 
dinary a course had the order of the heauens pro- 
duced at this time, that both nephew and son, 
were not only prisoners, but unknown to their 
vncle and father, who for many years had not 
seen them. And Pyrocles was to plead for his 
life before that throne, in which throne lately 
before he had saued the Kings life." Accord- 
ingly, both the Princes were resolved (V. 464) 
" that . . . they would as much as they could, 
couer the shame of their royall parentage . . . 
wherein the chiefe man they considered was 
Evarchus: whom the strange and secret working 
of iustice had brought to be the iudge over them. 
In such a shadow, or rather pit of darkenesse, the 
wormish mankind lives, that neither they know 
how to foresee nor what to feare: and are like 
tenisbals, tossed by the racket of the higher 
powers." And at the last stage of the denoue- 
ment, when Basilius wakes from his long sleep 
(V. 482), Sidney makes a final reassertion of the 
providential control of his plot, and connects that 
control with the fulfilment of the oracle: "At 
length remembring the Oracle, which now in- 
deed was accomplished, [and] considering all had 
falne out by the highest providence." 



324 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

The scope thus left to the agency of chance is 
narrow. Indeed, Sidney is refreshingly free from 
the Renaissance slavery to the notion and the 
word Fortune. His attitude is rather that of a 
strong intellect that will condescend to the habits 
of speech prevalent in his time. Fortune, there- 
fore, as a vera causa is rare in the "Arcadia," 
though she appears frequently as a more or less 
faded metaphor. In the former capacity she in- 
troduces Parthenia at the house of Kalander (I. 
vii, 31V.) : " Fortune (that belike was bid to that 
banket, and ment then to play the good fellow) 
brought a pleasant aduenture among the"; she 
permits the defeat of a Laconian Knight who 
championed the beauty of Andromana against 
Phalantus (I. xvi, 69): "therein Fortune had 
borrowed witte, for indeede she [Andromana] 
was not coparable to Artesia " ; and she is blamed 
by Phalantus for his own defeat (I. xvii, 75 v- 
76) : " He excusing himself, and turning over the 
fault to Fortune, Then let that be your ill For- 
tune too (said she [Artesia]) that you haue lost 
me." Again, in the first fight between Pyrocles 
and Anaxius (II. xix, 186), both spears having 
been broken, Anaxius's " horse happened to come 
vpon the point of the broken speare, which fallen 
to the ground chaunced to stand upward; so as 
it lighting upon his hart, the horse died. 9 He 
[A] driuen to dismount, threatened, if I [P] did 
not the like, to doo as much for my horse, as For- 
tune had done for his. But whether for that, or 
because / would not be beholding to Fortune for 

9 Cf. the death of the witch of Bessa. yEth., VI. xv. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 325 

any part of the victorie, I descended.'' Finally, 
she decides who shall tell a story : " Pamela pleas- 
antly persisting to haue fortune their iudge, they 
set hands [to ' draw cuts '] . . . and blind For- 
tune . . . gave [Mopsa] the preheminence " (II. 
xiv, 165). It is notable that all these cases ex- 
cept the last occur in episodes, not in the main 
plot; while the last is an incident of the most 
trivial kind. Sidney puts Fortune in her place, 
and keeps her there. 10 He is not even sure that 
she exists. Among the matters pondered by the 
student (III. ix, 273V.) are 

"The euer-turning spheares, the neuer-moving 
ground ; 
What essence dest'nie hath ; if fortune be or no." 

The same intellectual point of view is exhibited 
in Pamela's refutation of Cecropia's atheistic 
argument that the world was created by chance 
(III. x, 281V.-282) : "Perfect order, perfect 
beautie, perfect constancie, — if these be the chil- 
dren of Chaunce, or Fortune be the efficient of 
these, let Wisedome be counted the roote of 
wickednesse." 

But, as has been said, Sidney uses the language 
like other people. He speaks of Fortune and Na- 
ture (I. xvi, 70; II. v, 124V. ; II. xvii, 183; II. 
236V.; IV. 437), Fortune and Love (II. iv, 119), 
and their gifts, as well as of the "mazes of for- 
tune" (I. ix, 36), the " labyrinth of her fortune " 

10 On two additional functions which he allows her, that 
of creating a bizarre situation, and that of conducting a 
" tragedy," see post, pp. 355-357- 



326 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

(III. 350), the "course of my ill happe" (III. 
349), and of parting "from the greatest for- 
tunes" (II. vii, 1 32V.), suffering " eyther a like 
or a worse fortune" (I. v, 19), and trying in 
battle "each others fortune" (I. vi, 27), in the 
conventional fashion of his time. And in the 
same conventional fashion he personifies Fortune 
to point a conceit (II. v, 120V.) which explains 
why the excellent Dorus is poor : " Belike For- 
tune was afraide to lay her treasures, where they 
should be stained with so many perfections." 

In her relations to the forces of personality, 
Fortune becomes at once more real and more 
weak. Here Sidney departs from the conception 
of Fortune underlying the Greek Romances, and 
coincides with the Renaissance in its antithesis 
of Virtu and Fort una. He uses the word "virtue " 
in its Italian sense of virtu. Cecropia explains 
that she and her husband desired to succeed Ba- 
silius speedily on the Arcadian throne (III. ii, 
251): "to that passe had my husbands vertue 
(by my good helpe) within short time brought 
it with a plot we laide, as we should not have 
needed to have waited the tedious worke of a 
naturall end of Basilius." This is of course the 
extreme Machiavellian meaning; elsewhere the 
word has the classic Roman meaning of "valor." 
Amphialus and the Black Knight (III. xviii, 317) 
fought "a long space . . ., while neither vertue 
nor fortune seemed partiall of either side." Some- 
times the antithesis actually takes the form of 
Fortune versus "Valor" (III. viii, 272) or "cour- 
age" (III. xviii, 317V. ; II. iii, 109V.) ; sometimes 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 327 

that of Fortune versus "ones owne choice" (II. 
ix, 141 v.) ; sometimes that of Fortune and "de- 
serving" or "desert" (II. i, 99; II, x, 144V. ; V. 
459) ; sometimes that of Fortune and wisdom 
(II. xx, 191 v. ; IV. 429). In general, virtue sums 
up the forces of personality, moral or otherwise, 
fortune those of environment or circumstance. 
Philanax praises not a fugitive and cloistered 
virtue. "O no," he protests, against the King's 
plan to keep his daughters from temptation (I. 
iv, 15V.) : " O no ; he cannot be good, that knowes 
not why he is good, but stands so farre good, as 
his fortune may keepe him vnassaied." Only a 
coward will depend upon chance, as Clinias does 
(III. vii, 266) ; but even a brave man will adapt 
himself to it, — nay seize it and wring from it suc- 
cess. " Maister Dorus (saide the faire Pamela) 
me thinks you blame your fortune very wrong- 
fully, since the fault is not in Fortune, but in you 
that cannot frame yourself to your fortune" (II. 
ii, 106). And Pyrocles, biding his time of ven- 
geance for the indignities heaped upon him and 
the Princesses during their captivity, resolves 
(III. xxviii, 356V.) "to attend the uttermost oc- 
casion, which eue then brought his hairie fore- 
head 11 vnto [him]." Until that time came, how- 
ever, even he was helpless, — his valor left un- 
armed, and (III. xx, 327V.) "all troden vnder 
foot by the wheele of senselesse Fortune." These 
passages illustrate, without beginning to exhaust, 
Sidney's employment of the antithesis "Virtue 
versus Fortune." 12 They may be summed up, 

n " Fronte capillata, post est Occasio calva." 
"Other passages: II. ii, 107V. ; II. x, 144; II. xiii, 160; 
III. xvi, 310; III. 348; III. 394; IV. 428. 



328 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

together with Sidney's general attitude on the 
subject of Fortune as under the control of Provi- 
dence, in the sentiment of Pyrocles upon parting 
with his friend (III. 349) : " Farewell my Musi- 
dorus, the gods make fortune to waite on thy 
vertues." And so they do. 

Such is the plot of the "Arcadia." Its mate- 
rial, — motif, situation, incident, episode — comes 
chiefly from the " Amadis " and the Greek Ro- 
mances; the material it gets from the former 
being fitted into the frame of the latter. For its 
actuating force is the will of the gods, working 
itself out partly through the agency of Fortune, 
partly through the agency of human personality 
— " Virtue." And this dominant force shapes the 
frame of the story into the monumental form 
which Heliodorus applied to prose romance. 13 
Some considerations upon the narrative technique 
and structure of this plot, as distinguished from 
its material and its actuating forces, are reserved 
for a later portion of this chapter (post, p. 343 ff . ) . 

The minor part assigned to Fortune in the 
" Arcadia " leaves rather free play to human per- 
sonality, and, if Sidney had been not a romancer 
but a novelist, might have resulted in some nota- 
ble studies of character. As it is, his interest lies 
chiefly in plot and in setting, — the true interests 

13 Brunhuber, p. 23 : " Die Hauptgrundlage des englischen 
Romans [i. e., Sidney's ' Arcadia '] bildet die Amadis- 
dichtung, sowie der griechische Liebesroman. In ihnen 
fand Sidney sein Muster und Vorbild ; alle anderen Ein- 
fliisse und Einwirkungen erweisen sich als von entschieden 
untergeordneter Bedeutung." P. 20 : " . . . all das weist 
direkt oder indirekt auf Heliodor hin, wie uberhaupt der 
Geist Heliodors uber der Arcadia schwebt." 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 329 

of romance — and, next, in structure and style; 
so that his personages, with the exception of 
Gynecia, remain types. But they are types well 
differentiated. Philoclea and Pamela are quite 
distinct from each other, and from Gynecia; 
Pyrocles is distinct from Musidorus. Each shows 
the rudiments of characterization. The younger 
princess is soft and gentle of manner and tem- 
perament and yielding in love, though virtuous ; 
the elder, lofty and majestic in temper, dignified 
in manner, and of a virtue whose high principles 
tend to express themselves not only in action but 
in moralizing. There is excellent " psychology " 
in the account of Philoclea's growing affection 
for Zelmane: her soliloquy is sweet, and both 
subtle and true (II. iv, 115-119V.). Of the two 
Princes, Pyrocles is of the slender, delicate, half- 
feminine, but wholly courageous, high-strung, and 
" thoroughbred " type ; Musidorus more mature, 
more masculine, more used to the world's com- 
promises, and himself an adept in dissimulation 
for good ends. (I. xviii, 79-80V. : a most elabo- 
rate deception of his, invented to account for his 
presence in Arcadia ; cf . too his pretended court- 
ship of Mopsa.) 

The only characters directly traceable to Greek 
Romance are the two amorous women: Gynecia 
an imitation of Melitta; Andromana an imitation 
of Arsace and Demaeneta combined (cf. ante, pp. 
313-314). Other personages are merely there 
to play their part in the Greek Romance plot, and 
in so far are types from Greek Romance: the 
eloping hero and the eloping heroine ; the King as 



33° THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

judge condemning his own child. In these cases 
Sidney spares his reader the tedious and super- 
ficial " psychology " of Greek Romance ; when he 
has not penetrated to the springs of human con- 
duct, he does not pretend that he has. Seldom 
interested in character, he will not feign an in- 
terest he does not possess. 

Among his remaining personages — (there are 
in all eighty-eight named personages 14 in the 
"Arcadia") — the majority of such as are not 
names and nothing more (like the Knights named 
only when they are killed) are types set forth 
with a half-moralistic purpose hinted by their 
Greek names : Clinias " a verball craftie coward," 
Philanax a model counsellor, Evarchus a model 
King, Calodoulos a model servant, Anaxius a 
pattern of pride, Antiphilus a dastard lover, 
Chremes a miser, etc. Of unusual interest in 
conception though only rudimentary in execu- 
tion, is the character of Amphialus, doomed to 
bring misery and death upon all he loves. But 
Sidney's interest in character, and power to de- 
pict it, stop short of adequacy, here as elsewhere. 

His humor, too, is rather the humor of situa- 
tion and of words than that of character. Pyro- 
cles discovering that Musidorus is in love, rallies 
him (I. xviii, 77v.) by repeating some of the 
moralizing to which his friend previously treated 
him upon the like occasion ; and when Musidorus 
passionately recants this heresy, and shows un- 
mistakable symptoms of lovesickness, Pyrocles 

"Herr Brunhuber (p. 21) notes Sidney's adoption of the 
names Clitophon, Leucippe, and Clinias, from Achilles 
Tatiui. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 33 l 

pretends to think that all this is done to mock at 
him— -until he induces Musidorus to assure him 
gravely that he really is in love! This scene is 
the high-water mark of Sidney's humor. One 
wonders why some dramatist has not " conveyed " 
it into a comedy. Sidney's other humorous pas- 
sages are less fine. Dametas upon the attack of 
the she- bear (I. xix, 84) bravely sticks his head 
in a bush. Dametas and Clinias are egged on to 
fight each other in an island ; and this " Combat 
of Cowards" (III. xiii, 296V.-301) affords comic 
relief after the account of Argalus's death: the 
fun lies in Dametas's abusive challenge, his im- 
prese and motto, his awkwardness in managing 
his horse and weapons, and in his continual fear : 
" he cast his eye about, to see which way he might 
runne away, cursing all Hands in being euill scit- 
uated." But in all this there is physical absurdity 
that almost amounts to horseplay. And on the 
other hand, in Sidney's would-be funny accounts 
of the slaughter wrought by his heroes upon the 
Arcadian rebels, there is an ugly vein of cruelty 
that spoils the verbal quips (II. xxv, 215-216) : 
Pyrocles cuts off the nose of a tailor, who stoops 
to pick it up. "But as his hand was on the 
grounde to bring his nose to his head, [Pyrocles] 
with a blow sent his head to his nose." This in- 
human contempt for the rabble— one of the seamy 
sides of the chivalry even of a Sidney— is hardly 
to our modern taste. There is rather gross horse- 
play again in the situation where Dametas return- 
ing from his futile hunt for buried treasure finds 
Mopsa up a tree, holds her when she comes turn- 



33 3 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

bling down, talks with her at cross-purposes, and 
gets a beating from Miso for his pains (IV. 
405-7). An interesting passage of humor in the 
peasant vein (II. xiv, 162V.-166) intervenes be- 
tween the chivalrous, courtly, tragic episode of 
Erona and Antiphilus, related by Philoclea, and 
the similar episode of Plangus and Andromana, 
related by Pamela. Miso interrupts the Princesses 
to give her view of love, as she heard it from an 
old woman ; an unchivalrous, clerkly, peasant view 
of love in contrast with the views suggested by 
the Princesses. Then Mopsa proceeds to tell an 
old wives' tale — in fact a fairy-tale. The fun 
comes from the contrasting views of love, from 
Miso's conceit of her former beauty, from her 
prolixity, 15 from Mopsa's homely peasant phrases, 
and from the formulae, repetition, and allitera- 
tion of her mediaeval narrative. 16 At last Philo- 

15 "Which when this good old woraa perceiued (O the 
good wold woman, well may the bones rest of the good 
wold woma) she cald me into her house. I remember full 
well it stood in the lane as you go to the Barbers shop, all 
the towne knew her, there was a great losse of her : she 
called me to her, and taking first a soppe of wine to com- 
fort her hart (it was of the same wine that comes out of 
Candia, which we pay so deere for now a daies and in that 
good worlde was very good cheape) she cald me to her ; 
Minion said she," etc., etc. Is Miso an ancestress of Dame 
Quickly? 

19 " So one day, as his daughter was sitting in her win- 
dow, playing vpon a harpe, as sweete as any Rose, and 
combing her head with a combe all of precious stones, 
there came in a knight into the court, vpo a goodly horse, 
one haire of gold, and the other of siluer. . . . And so in 
May, when all true hartes reioyce, they stale out of the 
Castel. . . . But hauing laien so (wet by the raine, and 
burnt by the Sun) fiue dayes, and fiue nights, she gat up 
and went ouer many a high hil, and many a deepe riuer. 
. . . And so she went, & she went, & neuer rested the 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 333 

clea " stints " Mopsa of her tale much as the Host 
stints Chaucer of his" drasty" tale of Sir Thopas, 
and for much the same reasons. Here again the 
humor lies somewhat deep — in the incongruity 
between the courtly and the peasant views of 
love, and in the suggested incongruity between 
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. 

The sources of Sidney's humor are thus quite 
foreign to Greek Romance. Even that humoristic 
motif which is to be expected in any Elizabethan 
writer — misogyny, — and for which Sidney might 
have taken something from Achilles Tatius — ap- 
pears in the " Arcadia " only to be condemned. 
Musidorus remonstrates with Pyrocles against 
falling in love (I. xii, 51 v. ff.), but the tables are 
turned upon him (I. xviii, 77v.). Geron and 
Histor hold an amoeboeic pastoral debat de con- 
juge ducenda (I. 93V.-95), the former out of his 
age and experience arguing pro, the latter out of 
his disappointment in love arguing contra; and 
though the contest is left undecided, the old shep- 
herd has the best of it. A certain Knight (III. 
xii, 290-290V.) maintains "blasphemies against 
womankinde ; that namely that sex was the ouer- 
sight of Nature, the disgrace of reasonablenes, 
the obstinate cowards, the slaue-borne tyrants, 
the shops of vanities, the guilded wethercocks ; in 
whom conscience is but peeuishnes, chastitie way- 
wardnes, & gratefulnes a miracle." But Amphia- 
lus vanquishes him. Sir Philip's chivalry renders 

evening, where she wet in the morning. . . . With Dayly 
Diligence and Grisly Grones, he wan her affection. . . . 
And so she went ... til she came to a second Aunt, and 
she gaue her another Nut." 



334 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

impossible his adoption of the misogyny of 
Achilles Tatius. 

Characterization in the " Arcadia " is thus but 
slightly indebted, and humor in the "Arcadia" 
not indebted at all, to the Greek Romances. 
Where Sidney himself is somewhat meagre, he 
draws least from this source. 

It is otherwise with his employment of setting, 
or descriptive background. The moment the 
Princes are received by Kalander, Sidney indulges 
in a burst of pictorial writing — an eicfypaGi*; de- 
scribing Kalander's garden, pavilion, and paint- 
ings (I. iii, 9V.-10). The garden is patterned 
after Clitophon's (A. T., I. xv), with a pond in 
the middle which, like Clitophon's, doubles by 
reflection the beauties of flowers and trees. As 
if to acknowledge definitely his indebtedness, 
Sidney parallels Achilles Tatius's quibble about 
the trunk and the ivy ("The trunk was a support 
to the ivy, the ivy a wreath to the trunk") with 
a similar quibble about the "beddes of flowers, 
which being under the trees, the trees were to 
them a Pavilion, and they to the trees a mosaical 
floore." After describing an elaborate foun- 
tain, 17 he proceeds to the garden-house and its 
paintings : " There was Diana when Actaeon sawe 
her bathing, in whose cheekes the painter had set 
such a colour, as was mixt betweene shame & 

"This consists of a marble statue of Venus with the 
breasts running. It resembles the fountains of Venus and 
the Graces, in the " Hypnerotomachia Poliphili " (Fac- 
similes : Plates 23, 149, 150, 151) rather more than it re- 
sembles the carving on the vase in Sannazaro's *' Arcadia," 
to which Herr Brunhuber (p. 11) is inclined to attribute it. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 335 

disdaine. ... In another table was Atalanta; 
the posture of whose limmes was so liuelie ex- 
pressed, that . . . one would have sworne the 
very picture had runne." Here we recognize 
Achilles Tatius's stock devices of "conflicting 
emotions" and of speaking of a picture as if it 
were alive (A. T., III. vii, viii, V. iii). 

The description of Basilius's lodge and of the 
" devices " at the banquet (Arc, I. xiii, 62 ; xiv, 
62V.) recalls the Greek Romances only in its 
elaborateness : " The table was set neere to an 
excellent water-worke; for by the casting of the 
water in most cunning maner, it made (with the 
shining of the Sunne vpon it) a perfect rainbow 
. . . There were birds also made so finely, that 
they did not only deceiue the sight with their 
figure, but the hearing with their songs, which 
the watrie instruments did make their gorge 
deliuer." 18 Strangely enough, too, the storm 
which brought about the Princes' first shipwreck 
(Arc, II. vii, 131V.-132V.), does not owe any- 
thing specific to either Heliodorus or Achilles 
Tatius ; nor does the exquisite description of the 
river Ladon (III. xi, 148V.-149) — a lovely bit 
of landscape apparently Sidney's own. And 
strangest of all, Sidney neither here nor else- 
where takes anything from Longus. 

The descriptions of which he is most fond, the 
descriptions of symbolic armor and impresc, re- 
call Achilles Tatius's emblems, but probably are 
wholly due to the chivalry of Sidney's own time, 

18 A similar device is described by Nash's " Unfortunate 
Traveller" (ed. McKerrow, II, ^83-4) who saw it in a 
garden at Rome. 



33 6 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

which in its decay was grown symbolic and 
spectacular. Thus Amphialus preparing to court 
his prisoner Philoclea (III. iii, 253), selected 
his apparel with much care, particularly as to its 
color; "lest if gay, he might seeme to glorie in 
his iniury, and her wrong; if mourning, it might 
strike some euill presage vnto her of her fortune." 
He chose at length "black veluet, richly em- 
brodered with great pearle, & precious stones, 
but they set so among certaine tuffes of cypres, 
that the cypres was like blacke clowds, through 
which the Starrs might yeeld a darke luster." His 
collar was of alternate pieces, " the one ... of 
Diamonds and pearle, set with a white enamell, 
so as ... it seemed like shining ice, and the 
other ... of Rubies, and Opalles, had a fierie 
glistring, which he thought pictured the two pas- 
sions of Feare and Desire, wherein he was en- 
chayned." One other of these numerous passages 
is quoted because of its autobiographical interest. 
At the Iberian jousts (II. xxi, 196) "the Iberian 
Knight Philisides " [= Sir PHiLip SiDney him- 
self] appeared in shepherdish attire, with a shep- 
herd's boy as a page, and his lance-bearers dressed 
as shepherds — all very richly. " His Impresa was 
a sheepe marked with pitch, with this word 
Spotted to be knowne. And . . . before the Ladies 
departed from the windowes, among them there 
was one (they say) that was the Star [= Stella], 
whereby his course was only directed." 19 

19 Other descriptions of symbolic attire, armor, and im- 
prese, are found at I. xiii, 6ov. ; I. xvi, 68v. ; I. xvii, 71V. ; 

II. xxi, 197; III. xi, 287V.; III. xii, 292V.; III. xiii, 297V.; 

III. xvi, 3987.; IIL xyjii, 3 J 5-3*5 v., 320V. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 337 

A pure emblem, not connected with clothing 
or armor, is used by Dorus in his courtship of 
Pamela (II. iii, 112) : " I tooke a Iewell, made in 
the figure of a crab-fish, which, because it lookes 
one way and goes another, I thought it did fitly 
patterne out my looking to Mopsa, but bending 
to Pamela: The word about it was, By force, not 
choice; and still kneeling, besought the Princesse 
that she would vouchsafe to give it Mopsa." 

Miso's description of the old woman's concept 
of Love is also purely emblematic (II. xiv, 163V.- 
164) : " With that she broght me into a corner, 
where ther was painted a foule fied I trow: for 
he had a paire of homes like a Bull, his feete 
clouen, as many eyes vpon his bodie, as my gray- 
mare hath dappeis, & for all the world so placed. 
This moster sat like a hagman vpo a paire of 
gallowes, in his right hand he was painted holding 
a crowne of Laurell, in his left hand a purse 
or mony, & out of his mouth honge a lace of 
two faire pictures, of a ma & a woma, & such a 
countenance he shewed, as if he would perswade 
folks by those aluremets to come thither & be 
hanged." Of course, this kind of thing is wholly 
mediaeval, not even touched by the Renaissance. 

There are passages, however, which, though 
emblematically descriptive, yet suggest not only 
the Renaissance but Heliodorus too. The trionfo 
of Phalantus, for example (I. xvi, 68V.-71), 
headed by his lady Artesia in a chariot " inriched 
with pur[p]le & pearle, . . . drawne by foure 
winged horses with artificiall flaming mouths, 
and fiery winges, as if she had newly borrowed 

23 



338 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

them of Phoebus," is of course a piece of 
Renaissance pageantry, but is reminiscent of the 
procession at Delphi (Aeth., Ill, iii, iv; U 81-2). 
Pyrocles disguised as an Amazon (Arc, I. xii, 
50), though his attire be symbolic, yet reminds 
one of Theagenes in that procession. Pyrocles's 
mantle is "closed together with a very riche 
iewell: the devise whereof . . . was this: a 
Hercules made in little fourme, but a distaffe set 
within his hand as he once was by Omphales 
commaundement, with a worde in Greeke, . . . 
Never more valiant " : that is, never more valiant 
than when disguised as a woman in order to be 
the servitor of love — a plight shared by both 
Hercules and Pyrocles. The Heliodorean remin- 
iscence, dimmed here by Renaissance emblems, 
becomes unmistakable in other descriptive pas- 
sages that are free from symbolism. Pamela's 
description of Musidorus on horseback (Arc, II. 
v, 122) — his skill in manage, the pride of the 
horse, etc. — is a palpable imitation of the de- 
scription of Theagenes riding in the pomp at 
Delphi (^Eth., III. iii; U 81-2, quoted ante, p. 

185). 

Sidney has acquired from Heliodorus, too, the 
trick of " pathetic optics." On two occasions he 
uses the device of bringing a person within the 
field of sight or hearing of another who has 
been too preoccupied to be aware of him (cf. 
Mth., I. i; ante, p. 177). When Musidorus and 
Clitophon have repulsed the attack of Queen 
Helen's escort, she continues to keep her eyes 
fixed upon the portrait of Amphialus, which has 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 339 

held her gaze throughout the fight (Arc, I. x, 
43) : "But the chief e Ladie [viz. Queen Helen] 
hauing not so much as once heard the noise of 
this coflict (so had sorow closed vp al the 
entries of her mind, & loue tied her seces to that 
beloved picture), now the shadow of him [viz., 
Musidorus] falling vpo the picture made her cast 
vp her eie, and seeing the armor which too wel 
she knew [the armor of Amphialus], thinking 
him to be Amphialus the Lord of her desires 
(bloud coming more freely into her cheekes, as 
though it would be bold, & yet there growing new 
againe pale for feare) with a pitiful looke (like 
one vniustly condefied) My Lord Amphialus 
(said she) " . . . , etc. Again, Amphialus visit- 
ing his beloved captive Philoclea (Arc. III. iii, 
2 53 v ) finds her "(because her chamber was ouer- 
lightsome) sitting of that side of her bedde which 
was from the windowe; which did cast such a 
shadow vpon her, as a good Painter woulde be- 
stowe uppon Venus, when vnder the trees she 
bewayled the murther of Adonis: . . . ouer her 
head a scarfe, which did eclipse almost halfe 
her eyes, which vnder it fixed their beames upon 
the wall . . . with [a] . . . steddie maner . . . ; 
and so remayned they a good while after his 
comming in, he not daring to trouble her, nor she 
perceyuing him, till that (a little varying her 
thoughts something quickening her senses) she 
heard him as he happed to stirre his vpper gar- 
ment [which was stiff with silk, velvet, and 
pearls (see ante, p. 336) and would rustle and 
crackle] ; and perceyuing him, rose up, with a de- 



34© THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

meanure, where in the booke of Beautie there was 
nothing to be read but Sorrow: for Kindnesse 
was blotted out, and Anger was neuer there." 
The distraite lady, the position of her eyes, the 
interrupting man entering the field of her con- 
sciousness, the pictorial envisagement of the 
situation, the lady's pathos, and its effect upon 
her countenance, — these are the traditional ele- 
ments of Sidney's Heliodorean scene. 20 

The flavor of Heliodorus in the "Arcadia" 
grows more and more intense toward the close 
(cf. ante, p. 322) ; and at the trial one is not 
surprised to find a perfect deluge of pathetic 
optics. Here is the spectacular ensemble-scent 
of ordeal; men's lives and women's honor at 
stake; the succession to the Arcadian throne to 
be determined ; an august judge ; an ample audi- 
ence to be moved and to show its emotion, itself 
part of the moving spectacle. On Basilius's 
throne (V. 458) " Euarchus did set himselfe all 
clothed in blacke, with the principall men, who 
could in that suddennesse prouide themselves of 
such mourning rayments ; the whole people com- 
manded to keepe an orderly silence of each side, 
which was duly obserued of them, partly for the 
desire they had to see a good conclusion of these 
matters, and partly striken with admiration, as 
well at the graue and Princely presence of Eu- 
archus, as at the greatnesse of the cause, which 
was then to come in question." Enter now the 
prisoners (ibid., 459), Pyrocles, Musidorus, and 

20 Cf. also A. T., VI. vi: When Thersander enters the 
hut, Leucippe raises her dejected eyes, which he sees by 
a dim light. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 34 1 

Gynecia. "Her eies downe on the ground, of 
purpose not to looke on Pyrocles face ... for 
the feare, those motions [= emotions] . . . 
should be reuiued, which she had with the pas- 
sage of infinite sorrowes mortified. Great was 
the^ compassion the people felt, to see their 
Princesse state and beautie so deformed. . . . 
But by and by the sight of the other two prisoners 
[Pyr. and Mus.] drew most of the eies to that 
spectacle." And indeed their array and their 
bearing were most splendid. Pyrocles came 
" clothed after the Greeke manner, in a long coate 
of white veluet, . . . with great buttons of Dia- 
monds all along upon it ; " his white neck bare ; 
on his feet "slippers, which, after the ancient 
maner, were tyed up with certaine laces, which 
were fastned under his Knee, having wrapped 
about (with many prettie Knots) his naked 
legges;" his auburn hair, stirring in the wind, 
tied with a white ribbon, each end of which was 
adorned with a rich pearl. Musidorus was in a 
satin mantle of Tyrian purple, and wore a Persian 
tiara, set with rubies, upon his black curling 
hair. 21 Their courage in the face of death was 
thus expressed by way of the pride of life and 
lust of the eye. " In this sort with erected coun- 
tenances did these vnfortunate Princes suffer 
themselues to be ledde, shewing aright, by the 
comparison of them and Gynecia, how to diners 
persons compassion is diuersly to bee stirred." 
Gynecia, favorably known to the spectators, and 

"The color-scheme of their array accords with their 
complexions. The blond is in white, with diamonds and 
pearls, the brown in reds, with gold and rubies. 



34 2 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

known to be fallen from a high estate, stirs com- 
passion by an appearance of humility; the 
strangers, scarcely known, known only unfavor- 
ably, and not known to be Princes, must conquer 
compassion with an appearance of extraordinary 
valor. "And such effect indeed it "wrought in the 
whole assembly, their eyes yet standing as it 
were in the ballance to whether of them they 
should most direct their sight." Gynecia having 
finished her confession, sits down {ibid., 462). 
" But a great while it was, before anie bodie 
could bee heard speake, the whole people con- 
curring in a lamentable crie, so much had Gyne- 
cia' s words and behauiour stirred their hearts to 
a dole full compassion, neither in troath could 
most of them in their iudgments tell, whether they 
should bee more sorrie for her fault or her 
miserie: for the losse of her estate, or losse of 
her vertue. But most were most moved with 
that which was under their eies, the sense most 
subject to pitie." 

Further quotation, of the pathos of the guards 
and the spectators after Gynecia's condemnation 
{ibid., 463), of the pathos of Pyrocles and of 
Musidorus during and after Philanax's invec- 
tives against them {ibid., 467-8, 473), of the 
pathos of the people and of Sympathus at the 
conclusion of Musidorus's reply {ibid., 474), and 
of the pathos of the people and of Philanax him- 
self at Calodoulos's disclosure of the Princes' 
identity — could scarcely render more irresistible 
the conclusion that Sidney is consciously and de- 
liberately borrowing the pathetic optics of 
Heliodorus. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 343 

The same may be said of Sidney's borrowing of 
Heliodorus's narrative method, or structure (as 
distinguished from his narrative material — see 
ante, p. 328). To render this point clear, it 
will be necessary to give some account of the 
growth of the "Arcadia" to its present form 
under Sidney's hand. 

The earliest extant allusion to the " Arcadia " 
is believed 22 to be that in Thomas Howell's " De- 
vises " (1581). In this collection the verses 
" Written to a most excellent Book, full of rare 
inuention" (ed. Grosart, pp. 204-5) can hardly 
refer to anything but Sidney's romance : 

" Goe learned booke, and vnto Pallas sing, 
Thy pleasant tunes. . . . 

How much they erre, thy rare euent bewrayes, 
That stretch their skill the fates to ouerthrow: 
And how mans wisedome here in vaine seekes 

wayes, 
To shun high powers that sway our states below. 
Against whose rule, although we strive to runne, 
What Loue foresets, no humaine force may shunne. 

But all to long, thou hidste so perfite worke, 
. . . Then shewe thy selfe and seeme no more 

vnkinde. 
Unfolde thy fruite, and spread thy maysters praise, 
Whose prime of youth, graue deeds of age displaies. 

Go choyce conceits . . . 
Discourse of Lovers, and such as folde sheepe, . . . 
Goe yet I say . . . 

The worthy Countesse see thou follow euer, 
Tyll Fates doe fayle, maintaine her Noble name. 

^"Camb. Hist, of Eng. Lit.," III. viii, p. 211. 



344 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

This would perhaps date the composition of 
the "Arcadia" rather before 1580, the year of 
Sidney's retirement to Wilton, and the year 
usually assigned. A year of non-publication — 
from 1580 to 1 581 — would hardly be enough to 
justify Howell in complaining ..." all to long 
thou hidste so perfite work — " ; books often re- 
mained unpublished and were circulated in Ms. 
for much longer than a year. The "Arcadia" 
may well have been composed, as Mr. Dobell sug- 
gests (p. 82), between 1578 and 1580. 

More important for the present purpose than 
the date, is the form in which Sidney wrote his 
romance. A letter 23 of Lord Brooke (Fulke 
Greville, Sidney's friend) to Sir Francis Wal- 
singham (Sidney's father-in-law) written after 
Sidney's death (1586), preserved among the State 
Papers, and endorsed "November, 1586," speaks 
of " Sr. Philip Sydney's old arcadia," and of " a 
correction of that old one, don 4 or 5 years sinse, 
which he [Sidney] left in trust with me; wherof 
ther is no more copies, and fitter to be printed 
then the first, which is so common." Abraham 
Fraunce's "Arcadian Rhetorike," as observed by 
E. Koeppel, 24 and Beaumont and Fletcher's " Cu- 
pids Revenge," 25 which is founded on the " Arca- 
dia," show that Sidney at first used the name 
Cleophila (adopted from the "Amadis") 26 in- 
stead of Zelmane. There was evidently, then, an 
"Old Arcadia," unpublished but circulated in 

n Quoted by Sommer, Introduction to his facsimile ed., 
p. 1 ; and by Dobell, p. 76. 

** Anglia, X. 522 ff. Cited by Brunhuber, p. 19, n. 2. 
* Brunhuber, ibid., and p. 32. 
*• Brunhuber, p. 19. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 345 

manuscript, which, in one particular at least, dif- 
fered from the published versions. 

How much it differed remained unknown for 
rather more than three centuries, during which it 
was supposed that no copies of the " Old Ar- 
cadia " were extant. In the year 1907, however, 
Mr. Bertram Dobell found no less than three Ms. 
copies of it. 27 The contents of these were " prac- 
tically identical." 28 Two of them are now in the 
possession of an American collector, who has 
kindly permitted me to examine them, and to 
make the transcripts and notes printed in the 
present study (Appendix B). Mr. Dobell's ac- 
count, verified at every point, and supplemented, 
by my own examination of the Mss., supports the 
following assertions: 

1. Sidney wrote, during or before 1580, a com- 
plete romance, never printed, but widely circu- 
lated in Ms. It consisted of five books, or 
" Acts," with " Eglogues " inserted between every 
two books. This is the original, or "Old 
Arcadia." 

2. Later he began " a correction of that old 
one," or rather a new version, entirely recast, 
and greatly augmented by the addition of numer- 
ous episodes. This new version, when cut off by 
his death in 1586, had proceeded to a point near 
the end of one of the added episodes — that of 
" Cecropia or the Captivity." As far as it went, 
the recast version contained two Books, with two 
sets of Eclogues, and an inordinately long frag- 

* His account of his find appeared in the Quarterly Re- 
view, July, 1909 (Vol. 211), pp. 74-100. 

* Dobell, p. 89. 



34° THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

ment of a Third Book. It was published in 1590, 
quarto; and is the first edition of any part of 
the " Arcadia." The " overseer of the print " 
divided it into chapters, with captions indicating 
the contents of each chapter. This I call the 
" New Arcadia." 

3. In 1593 appeared an edition authorized by 
the Countess of Pembroke. This is the current 
version, reproduced in numerous subsequent edi- 
tions, and may be called the " Arcadia," sans plus. 
It is made up as follows : 

(a) The New Arcadia, but without chapter- 
divisions or chapter-headings; divided only into 
Book I ; Eclogues ; Book II ; Eclogues ; and Book 
III as far as the end of the revision. 

(b) An ending to Book III, consisting of the 
whole of Book III of the Old Arcadia; likewise 
Eclogues to Book III; Book IV; Eclogues to 
Book IV ; and Book V, all from the Old Arcadia. 

(c) At the beginning of the part of Book III 
following the hiatus — viz., at the beginning of 
Book III of the Old Arcadia, there has been 
inserted a transitional clause not found in the 
Old Arcadia: "After that Basilius (according to 
the Oracles promise) had received back his 
daughters," etc. Of course, no such clause was 
necessary, or possible, in the Old Arcadia, for 
that did not contain the episode of the Captivity. 
Doubtless it was inserted by the Countess or her 
friends to bridge the gap. 

(d) At the end of Book V, the list of unfinished 
episodes omits the loves of Amasis and Artaxia 
(see Ap. B, p. 475), and mentions instead the 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 347 

episode of Helen and Amphialus. The reason is 
that " Amasis and Artaxia " is in the Old Arcadia 
but not in the New ; " Helen and Amphialus " 
is in the New Arcadia but not in the Old. 
Doubtless this change, like (c), was made by the 
Countess or her friends. 

The changes which Sidney made in the Old 
Arcadia to produce the New are of great in- 
terest. The contents of the Old Arcadia are as 
follows : 

A. What I have called the " main plot " : Ora- 
cle ; Basilius and his family retire ; Princes arrive, 
fall in love, assume disguise; Basilius (here called 
"Duke," not "King") and Gynecia fall in love 
with "Cleophila" (Pyrocles's name as Amazon, 
instead of " Zelmane " — cf . ante, p. 344) ; and 
contents of Books III, IV, and V as in the cur- 
rent "Arcadia": Musidorus and Pamela elope 
and are captured ; " Cleophila " makes double 
rendezvous and double quiproquo, and is cap- 
tured with Philoclea; Basilius drinks potion and 
is supposed to be dead ; Evarchus arrives and pre- 
sides at trial; recognition, reunion, resuscitation 
of Basilius, and happy ending. 

B. The earlier history of the Princes. This is 
only hinted in the body of the Romance, but is 
told in full (though much more briefly than in 
the New Arcadia), in the Eclogues to Books I 
and II. 

C. Episodes — also excluded from the body of 
the Romance, and related in the Eclogues to 
Books I and II as they occur in connection with 
the Princes' travels: (a) Erona, Antiphilus, and 



348 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Plangus (Ap. B, p. 472). (b) Amasis and his 
(unnamed) stepmother, Queen at Memphis (Ap. 
B, p. 473-4). (c) Andromana and the Princes 
(Ap. B, p. 473). (Nothing about Andromana 
and Plangus, 29 Argalus and Parthenia, Amphia- 
lus and Helen, Phalantus and Artesia, Pamphilus 
and Dido, the Paphlagonica, or the Captivity.) 

Especially notable is the order in which these 
materials are set forth. The oracle, the actuating 
force of the whole Romance, is artlessly disclosed 
at the very beginning. Thenceforth the other 
events in the Main Plot follow in chronological 
order. The Earlier History of the Princes, the 
Episodes — all that might invert the chronological 
order, or in any way render the narrative com- 
plex or involved — are shut off into the Eclogues. 

The processes by which Sidney turned the Old 
Arcadia into the New may be classified as follows : 

1. Augmentation. — He added largely to the 
Princes' previous adventures; and he added in 
toto the episodes of Argalus and Parthenia, Am- 
phialus and Helen, Phalantus and Artesia, Pam- 
philus and Dido, the Paphlagonica or Galatica, 
and Cecropia or the Captivity. 

2. Combination or Merger. — He compounded 
Andromana, who solicited and imprisoned the 
Princes 30 and was afterwards the wife of an 
apple-monger, with the unnamed Egyptian Queen 
who solicited and slandered her stepson Amasis, 
and afterwards killed herself. 31 He called the 
combination " Andromana," made her at first the 

29 But see post, p. 349. 
w Heliodorus's Arsace. 
81 Heliodorus's Demaeneta. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 349 

wife of a citizen, and attributed to her both the 
attempted intrigues,— that with the Princes, and 
that with, and against, her stepson (cf. ante, 
PP- 3I3-3H). 

This stepson, originally Amasis a Prince at 
Memphis, Sidney merged into the Plangus who 
was already in love with Erona ; and he called the 
result "Plangus." Consequently he discarded 
Amasis, whose betrothal to Artaxia was men- 
tioned in the Old Arcadia, and whose story was 
left unfinished at the end. Consequently, too, the 
editors of the current "Arcadia" were obliged 
to strike out this mention from the end of their 
Book V (see ante, pp. 346-347). 

3. Complication. — The Episodes, and the Pre- 
vious History of the Princes, Sidney now took 
from the Eclogues, and inserted them into the 
body of the New Arcadia. The Previous His- 
tory of the Princes he now placed in their own 
mouths: they tell the "story of their lives" as 
part of their courtship (Musidorus at II. iii, vi- 
x, Pyrocles at II. xvii-xxiii). Their act of nar- 
ration is thus one of the events actually current 
in the Main Plot. The Episodes come into the 
current narrative in either or both of two ways. 
When, like " Phalantus and Artesia," the episode 
has no connection with the previous history of the 
Princes, it is simply inserted in the Main Plot. 
When, like the " Paphlagonica," it forms part 
of the experience of the Princes during their tour 
through Asia, it comes in as a portion of their 
narrative. And when, as in the case of " Antiph- 
ilus, Erona, and Plangus " it also forms part of 



35° THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

a chain of events affecting the Main Plot itself, 
it enters the current narrative in both ways : the 
Princesses tell part of it, and we hear that Plan- 
gus himself was their informant, as he passed 
through Arcadia on his way to summon Evarchus 
to the rescue of Erona. Not satisfied merely to 
connect episodes with the Main Plot, Sidney must 
connect them with each other too. Plangus ap- 
pears in the episode of Erona and in that of 
Andromana. Plexirtus reaches out from the 
" Paphlagonica," and takes in marriage Artaxia, 
from the " Erona " story. Together they not only 
continue to persecute Erona, and cause Plangus 
to seek rescue for her across the Main Plot, but 
they seek the lives of the Princes; and it was 
Plexirtus's treachery that cast the Princes on the 
Laconian coast, and ultimately brought them to 
the family of Basilius. Amphialus, in the same 
way, figures in the episode of Queen Helen, the 
episode of Argalus and Parthenia, the episode of 
the Captivity, and the Main Plot. 

4. Suspense. — An immediate result of this in- 
terpolation and interlacing of episode with main 
plot and with previous history is that no story is 
ever finished at a sitting. One story must be sus- 
pended while another is begun; and that in its 
turn must give way to a third; then the main 
current may be resumed for a moment, only to 
stop again while one of the inserted stories is 
continued. 32 Thus (II. xiv, 162) Philoclea has 

33 Despite his frequent interruptions, however, Sidney 
does not indulge in digression or irrelevancy, except in 
his descriptions of imprese (cf. ante, p. 335 ff). He con- 
fesses his fault (II. xxi, iq6v.) : " Thus I have digrest, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 35 1 

told the first portion of the story of Erona, end- 
ing with the marriage to Antiphilus. Now, she 
says, there is horrible matter to tell : " So if I do 
not desire you to stop your eares fro me, yet may 
I well desire a breathing time, before I am to tell 
the execrable treason of Antiphilus." Accord- 
ingly she stops, and asks Pamela to tell meanwhile 
the story of Plangus. Pamela is willing ; but Miso 
interrupts with her abuse of Love, and Mopsa 
interrupts with her fairy-tale. Then (II. xv, 166- 
172) Pamela tells the story of Plangus, to the 
point where Plangus returns to Armenia leaving 
Erona married to Antiphilus (viz., the same point 
of time at which Philoclea has broken off) : 172 
" when Erona by the treason of Antiphilus. But 
at that word she stopped. For Basilius . . . came 
sodainly among them." The Main Plot now goes 
on. The story of Erona is not resumed till the 
end of II. xxiv, 2i2v., and then only to be inter- 
rupted as soon as resumed. It is actually told at 
last by Basilius to Zelmane (=Pyrocles), II. 
xxix, 227-233V. (the very end of Book II). 

5. Inversion. — This new narrative plan implies 
an almost total destruction of chronological or- 
der. The epic convention of having "the story 
of one's life" narrated by a personage in the 
course of the current story, belongs with the epic 
convention of plunging at once in medias res. 
Sidney adopts both for the New Arcadia. It be- 
gins with the Princes' second shipwreck, the one 
that casts them on the coast of Laconia. Thence 

because his manner liked me wel ; " and again {ibid., 197) : 
" But the delight of those pleasing sights have [sic] car- 
ried me too farre in an unnecessary discourse." 



35 2 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

it proceeds chronologically, until Kalander goes 
back to tell the occasion of Basilius's retirement. 
Until Musidorus meets Pyrocles again at Car- 
damila, the story is chronological once more ; but 
then Pyrocles must go back and tell his adven- 
tures from the time when the pirates took him 
from the floating mast. This alternation of cur- 
rent narrative moving straightforward, with re- 
lated narrative telling of earlier events, continues 
till the end of Book II, after which comes the 
Captivity, and then the long denouement in the 
order of time as it prevailed in the Old Arcadia. 
The epic convention finds its greatest triumph, 
perhaps, in withholding the text of the oracle, the 
prime mover of the Main Plot, till the reader, if 
he has survived at all, is dying of curiosity to 
know what all this is about. Though he has heard 
that an Oracle caused it all, he is not told what 
the Oracle said, until folio 225 verso, — 450 pages 
from the beginning! 

Of course, such marvellous involution and com- 
plexity defeat their own artistic ends. One who 
reads for pleasure simply cannot understand the 
" Arcadia." He gets a dim notion, after awhile, 
of the course of the Main Plot; but most of the 
Episodes, with their relation to each other, to the 
Main Plot, and to the Previous History of the 
Princes, remain in a fog. Only a deliberate disen- 
tanglement of the threads — to employ a paradox 
— can make the pattern clear. But the same pro- 
cess of disentanglement shows with what deliber- 
ation, and with what almost incredible skill, Sid- 
ney performed the opposite process — the process 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 353 

of re-weaving the Old Arcadia upon the loom 
of Helidorus. For he has not dropped a single 
thread in the whole enormous design. As far 
as he recast it, the grandiose pattern is perfect. 38 
And evidences of deliberate narrative skill abound : 
as in the employment of suspense (cf. ante, pp. 
350-351), the introduction of comic relief (cf. 
ante, pp. 330-331), the ridicule of mediaeval nar- 
rative structure (cf. ante, pp. 332-3), and the 
lapse of Musidorus's narrative about himself 
from the third to the first person (II. xiii, 137), — 
a lapse which betrays his identity to the amused 
Pamela. 34 Evidently, Sidney has acquired to the 
full the narrative technique of Heliodorus, and 
has bettered the instruction. 

The Old Arcadia consisted of material largely 
derived from Heliodorus and wholly kept within 
a Heliodorean frame; the New Arcadia retains 
this material and this frame, and deliberately re- 
casts it in the Heliodorean mould of narrative 
structure. Sidney has learned to write Greek Ro- 
mance in English. It is difficult not to regard the 
New Arcadia as a conscious attempt to domesti- 
cate the genre. 

83 There is one inconsistency, so trivial as to be scarcely 
worth mentioning. At II. x, 142, the Princes are said to 
be on their way through " Galacia " when they overhear 
the talk of the deposed and blinded King with his son 
Leonatus. Ibid., 143, Leonatus, in telling the story, says: 
" This old man . . . was lately rightfull Prince of this 
countrie of Paphlagonia." At II. xxii, 201V. ; II. xxiii, 
2o6v., and ibid., 208, it is Galatia again. — Sidney may have 
forgotten to change one " Paphlagonia " to " Galatia " ; or 
his Ms. change may have been so dim that the printer 
made the error, which the " overseer of the print " over- 
looked. 

84 Cf. " Heptameron " (VII), 62. 
24 



354 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

This impression is confirmed, strongly and 
subtly, by the style of the "Arcadia/' Compounded 
of many ingredients, Sidney's style varies from 
page to page. Sometimes it is touched with 
Euphuism, sometimes with Petrarchism, some- 
times with the Catalogue, Summary, and Splitting 
Constructions of late Latin rhetoric. Sometimes 
it has lovely cadences of its own, — as in the pas- 
sage about the shepherd who piped "as if he 
never would be old," or the passage (quoted ante, 
p. 339) ending " for Kindness was blotted out, 
and Anger was never there." But its prevailing 
characteristics are " epideictic " : a fondness for 
the oratory, the theatrical terminology, the an- 
tithesis, and the oxymoron, which give such a 
specific flavor to Greek Romance. 

The first of these is more prominent in the Old 
Arcadia than in the New. There are, to be sure, 
three set speeches in the newer Books : Pyrocles's 
oration to the Helots (I. vii, 29.V.-3OV.) ; Pyro- 
cles's harangue to the Arcadian rebels (II. xxvi, 
217-220) ; and Clinias's crafty and plausible ex- 
planation of the rebellion he has himself incited 
(II. xxvii, 221V.-223V.). But these are almost 
inconsiderable when compared with the full tide 
of discourse in the Old Arcadia — the latter part 
of Book III, together with Books IV and V. The 
space which in Books I— III was filled with action 
or the narrative of action (frequently episodic) 
is here, in the absence of episodes, given over to 
speech-making. There are long parting speeches 
between the princely friends (III. 347) ; protesta- 
tions between the lovers (III. 361); arguments 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 355 

for and against suicide (IV. 419-22) ; Musi- 
dorus's argument to persuade his rebel captors to 
help him elope with Pamela instead of turning 
him over to the authorities (IV. 431); Timau- 
tus's harangue against Philanax, and Philanax's 
reply (IV. 436) ; Philanax's petition to Evarchus 
to accept the Protectorate, and Evarchus's reply 
(V. 450, 451); Evarchus's speech to the Arca- 
dians upon assuming the Protectorate (V. 45 2 )- 
And finally there is the grand outburst of Elo- 
quentia at the trial : Musidorus's harangue to the 
Arcadians to persuade them to protect Pamela 
(V. 460) ; Pyrocles's exoneration of Philoclea 
(V. 461) ; Gynecia's public confession (V. 462) ; 
Philanax's invective against Pyrocles (V. 464- 
467) ; Pyrocles's reply (V. 468-470) ; Philanax's 
invective against Musidorus (V. 47 2 ~3) ; Musi- 
dorus's reply (V. 473-4) ; Evarchus's sentence 
(V. 475-477) ; and his confirmation of it after 
being informed who the prisoners are (V. 479)- 
The bulk of this material, especially when taken 
together with those other pieces of display, the 
e/c^/oaeras, is so great as to give to the "Arcadia " 
as a whole the same distinctly rhetorical cast 
that is characteristic of Greek Romance. 

Sidney's envisagement of his situations in theat- 
rical terms is about equally reminiscent of Achilles 
Tatius and of Heliodorus. The Princesses have 
a moment's respite when Amphialus and Cecropia 
have been put out of the way ; but soon Anaxius 
threatens them with death (III. xxvi, 349v) : 
"Sister (said she) you see how many acts our 
Tragedy hath; Fortune is not yet a wearie of 



356 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

vexing us" (cf. A. T., VI. iii ; iEth., V. vi; VI. 
iii). Musidorus tells of the Princes' first ship- 
wreck (II. vii, 131V.) : "There arose euen with 
the Sun, a vaile of darke cloudes before his face, 
which shortly . . . had blacked ouer all the face 
of heaven; preparing (as it were) a mournefull 
stage for a Tragedie to be plaied on" (ibid., 
1 32V.). "The next morning . . . having runne 
fortune as blindly as it selfe ever was painted, 
lest the conclusion should not aunswere to the 
rest of the play, they were driuen vpon a rocke." 
The reason why the King of Pontus sent aid to 
the Princes on their way through Galatia (Paph- 
lagonia) was that he thought that country, ruled 
as it was by Plexirtus (II. x, 145), "a fit place 
inough to make the stage of any Tragedie." 
Under the tortures inflicted by Cecropia (III. xx, 
3-27V.-328) Philoclea '" wasted, euen longing for 
the conclusion of her tedious tragedie." Having 
concluded to show Philoclea the (pretended) de- 
capitation of Pamela, Cecropia (III. xxi, 329V.) 
" went to Philoclea, and told her, that now she 
was come to the last parte of the play " (ibid., 
33OV). "And since no intreating, nor threatning 
might preuayle, she bad her prepare her eies for 
a new play, which she should see within fewe 
houres in the hall of that castle." When Anaxius 
attempts a loutish caress (III. xxvi, 352), Pamela 
exclaims : " Proud beast, yet thou plaiest worse 
thy Comedy, then thy Tragedy" (cf. A. T., VIII. 
x : Tr?? fxev rov Upeoos • • • KCDfiayhia? rj/covaa/xev, • • • 
a 8e fxera rrjv Kwybwhlav irpaya>Br)(T€v tJStj). When 
Pyrocles retired to the cave, Gynecia was joyful 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 357 

(III. 373), "holding her selfe assured that this 
was but a prologue to the play [Pyrocles] had 
promised." Earlier (III. 354) when she found 
him cold, she theatened : " Trust to it hard 
hearted Tygre, I will not be the only Actor of 
this Tragedie: since I must fall, I will presse 
down some others with my ruines." And later 
(IV. 413), when Basilius after drinking the po- 
tion has fallen apparently dead, Gynecia, con- 
templating her own approaching death, exclaims : 
" O Zelmane . . . there is a faire stage prepared 
for thee, to see the tragicall end of thy hated 
lover." 

Fortune not only brings about tragedy and 
comedy; it is her special function to contrive 
those bizarre situations and engineer those sud- 
den turns, which being "contrary to expecta- 
tion," produce paradox, antithesis, and oxymoron 
in style. 35 Musidorus, about to be put to death 
by the King of Phrygia, is saved by Pyrocles, 
who places in his hand the very sword that was 
to have cut off his head ! The two Princes clear 
the scaffold; rioting ensues among the soldiers; 
the friends of liberty rise, overpower the guard, 
take the city, and choose Musidorus King! (II. 
viii, 138) "whom foorthwith they lifted up, For- 
tune (I thinke) smiling at her worke therein, 
that a scaffold of execution should grow a scaf- 
fold of coronation." 36 Here are the usual in- 

83 ij tSl irap&8o%a Kal to a86K7}Ta (pCkovaa ipydfrvOcu rixt- 
Aelian, " Var. Hist.,'* XIII. 33- 

86 In Iamblichus's " Babylonica," xxii, Rhodanes, about 
to be crucified by order of King Garmus, is released, and 
becomes King in Garmus's place. Possibly Sidney saw a 



35$ THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

gredients, — in the situation a sharp peripeteia 
wrought by Fortune, in the style a corresponding 
antithesis. Or, Philoclea runs away from the 
lion ; Pyrocles having already killed the lion runs 
after her to present her the head; Gynecia runs 
after Zelmane : — a bizarre situation (I. xix, 82). 
" So that it was a new sight, Fortune had pre- 
pared to those woods, to see these great person- 
ages thus runne one after the other" (cf. A. T., 
II. xiv, yiverai to Bea/na, tccuvbv). Or, Amphialus 
having mortally wounded Parthenia disguised as 
the Knight of the Tomb (III. xvi, 310), "was 
astonished with griefe . . ., detesting his for- 
tune, that made him vnfortunate in victory." Or 
again, Philoclea is on her way to plead to Zel- 
mane the suit of Basilius, when she would much 
rather speak for herself (II. xvii, 176): "Well 
she sawe her father was growen her adverse 
partie, and yet her fortune such, as she must 
fauour her Riuall; and the fortune of that for- 
tune such, as neither that did hurt her, nor any 
contrarie meane helpe her." In all these cases, 
as in others, the substance moulds the form; the 
event itself containing contradictory elements 
which express themselves in verbal opposition. 

A number of these antithetical passages are 
direct imitations of Heliodorus and Achilles 
Tatius. The opening of the " Arcadia " — the 
description of the shipwreck — at once strikes the 
note of Greek Romance. The shepherds and 
Musidorus sailing out to the wreck (I. i, 4V.) 

Ms. of Photius's " Bibliotheca," which gives a summary 
of Iamblichus's romance. Photius was not printed until 
1601. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 359 

" saw a sight full of piteous strangeness : a ship 
. . . part broken, part burned, part drowned . . . 
About it rioted great store of very rich thinges 
. . . and amidst the precious things were a num- 
ber of dead bodies, which likewise did not onely 
testifie both elements [viz., fire's and water's] 
violence, but that the chiefe violence was growen 
of humane inhumanitie . . . in summe, a defeate, 
where the conquered kept both field and spoile; 
a shipzvreck without storme or ill footing; and a 
waste of fire in the midst of water!' The scene 
of dead men as sole possessors of rich spoil is 
also Heliodorus's opening scene (/Eth., I. i; V. 
xxix ; U 148) ; the strange wreck is closely akin 
to Gorgias's purple patch, imitated by Achilles 
Tatius (A. T., IV. xiv) among many others 
(ante, p. 218 ff.) ; and the " fire and water" com- 
bination is from Achilles Tatius's Sicilian spring 
(A. T\, II. xiv). When Sidney returns to this 
same shipwreck (Arc, II. xxiv, 211), he again 
gets his motifs from Greek Romance. The cap- 
tain having been commissioned by Plexirtus to 
murder the Princes, a fight occurs between the 
mariners and their own passengers, as in A. T., 
II. iii — ("a strange new kind of sea-fight," 
Achilles Tatius calls it). As in Achilles Tatius, 
so in Sidney, there is a conflict for the possession 
of the boats (Arc, II. xxiv, 210V.-211): "The 
most part . . . leapt into the boate, which was 
fast to the ship: but while they that were first, 
were cutting of the rope that tied it, others came 
leaping in, so disorderly that they drowned both 
the boate, and themselves." And meanwhile the 



3^0 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

ship takes fire (ibid., 211): " Truely it was a 
straunge and ougly sight to see so huge a fire 
. . . in the Sea." (Fire and water again.) 

Another purple patch from Heliodorus's open- 
ing scene Sidney has sewed upon Clinias's ac- 
count of the Arcadian insurrection. Celebrating 
the king's birthday, the populace got drunk and 
quarrelsome (Arc, II. xxvii, 223-223V.) : "Thus 
was their banquette turned to a battaile, their 
winie mirthes to blondie rages . . . They neuer 
weyed how to arme theselues, but tooke up every- 
thing for a weapon, that furie offered to their 
handes . . . some caught hold of spittes (thinges 
seruiceable for life) to be the instruments of 
death. And there was some such one, who held 
the same pot zvherein he drank to your health, to 
vse it . . . to your mischief e. }> The italicized 
particulars are taken almost verbatim from ^Eth., 
I. i (U 9-10) : "... the tables were furnished 
with delicate dishes, some whereof laie in the 
handes of those that were slaine, being in steede 
of weapons . . . Besides, the cuppes were over- 
throwen, and fell out of the handes, either of 
them that dranke, or those, who had insteade of 
stones used them. For that soudaine mischief e 
wrought newe devises, and taught them in steade 
of weapons to use their pottes . . . bruing bloude 
with wine, joyning battaile with banketting." 
These verbal parallels tend to show that, though 
Sidney may have used the original Greek, he also 
had before him the translation by Underdowne. 

Musidorus apostrophizes the letter he is about 
to hand to Pamela (II. v, 123V.) : "Therefore 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 36 1 

mourne boldly, my Inke; for while she lookes 
upon you, your blacknes wil shine : crie out boldly, 
my Lametatio; for while she reads you, your 
cries will be musicke" The original may be 
either A. T., III. x: tov Oprjvov i^op^ao/jbai^rX. 
or JEth., VI. viii: aawfxev Op-qvovs ical yoovs 
vTTopxv™/*^ " U. 162-3: "Let us sing tears 
. . . and dance lamentations." Handing her this 
letter (ibid., 124) "hee went away as if he had 
beene but the coffin that carried himselfe to his 
sepulcher." This is evidently part of the long 
train that follows Gorgias's 7{/7re? en^vxpt ra<f>ol 
(ante, p. 220). The captors of Musidorus and 
Pamela have not heard the news that the king is 
dead. Returning with their captives (IV. 432) 
they are met by a troop of horsemen " marvelling 
who they were that in such a general mourning, 
durst sing joy full tunes, and in so publique a 
ruine weare the lawrell token of victory [cf. 
iEth., VI. viii, and A. T., Ill, x, as above, for 
antithesis of mourning and rejoicing]. And that 
which seemed strangest, they might see two among 
them unarmed like prisoners, but riding like Cap- 
taines." Heliodorus furnishes this last antithesis 
(JEth., I. iv). Thyamis having captured Thea- 
genes and Chariclea treats them with deference 
(U 13-14) : " hee, who was their maister, waited 
upon them, and he who tooke them prysoners, was 
content to serve them." Sidney uses it again 
when Gynecia has difficulty in persuading the 
shepherds to make her their prisoner for the 
supposed murder of the King (IV. 414). They 
hesitated "till she was faine to lead them, with 



362 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

a very strange spectacle, either that a Princesses 
should be in the hands of shepherds, or a pris- 
oner should direct her guardians." 

Musidorus seeing Pyrocles taken by pirates ex- 
claims (Li, 5v.) : "Alas . . . deere Pyrocles shall 
that bodie of thine be enchaynedf shall those 
victorious handes of thine be commaunded to 
base offices? Shall vertue become a slave to those 
that be slaves to viciousness?" The original may 
be either ^th., V. ii; U 126: "Art thou [Thea- 
genes] . . . bounde, which has a free minde 
. . .?" (cf. also ^Eth., I. xxix; II. iv), or A. T., 
III. xvi: "Shalt thou (Leucippe) pure as thou 
art, be food for the most impure ? " Sidney em- 
ploys it again. Embarrassed by the peculiar con- 
straints of his position towards the royal family, 
Pyrocles exclaims (II. xvi, 173) : "Alas, incom- 
parable Philoclea, thou ever seest me, but dost 
never see me as I am : ; thou hearest willingly all 
that I dare say, and I dare not say that which 
were most fit for thee to heare. Alas, whoever 
but I was imprisoned in liber tie, and banished 
being still present?" The last antithesis is from 
Achilles Tatius. The gnat in the fable (A. T., 
II. xxii) : Trapcov ov irdpeifit; Clitophon's letter 
(A.T.,V. xx ) : ae irapovcrav o>? airoh^ixovcrav opco. 
Musidorus blames the storm for not ending his 
life, but letting him live to suffer the pains of 
love (Arc, II. iii, 109) : " O cruell winds in your 
unconsiderate rages, why either beganne you this 
furie, or why did you not end it in his end? But 
your cruelty was such, as you would spare his 
life for many death full torments." In the same 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 3 6 3 

way Clitophon (A. T., III. x), apostrophizing 
the sea, exclaims : " I blame your kindness ; in 
saving us you have rather killed us." 

Achilles Tatius's mannerism of attributing 
mixed or conflicting emotions, especially as shown 
by persons represented in a painting (A. T., III. 
vii, viii; V. iii) gives Sidney the antithesis he 
needs for his description of the pictures in Ka- 
lander's garden house (Arc, I. iii, 10) : "There 
was Diana when Actaeon sawe her bathing, in 
whose cheekes the painter had set such a colour, 
as was mixt betweene shame and disdaine : & one 
of her foolish Nymphes, who, weeping and withal 
lozvring, one might see the workman meant to set 
forth teares of anger" Again (Arc, I. i, 2) : 
Urania "because of her parting [bore] much 
sorrow in her eyes, the lightsomenes whereof had 
yet so natural a cherefulnesse, as it made even 
sorrozv seem to smile." To this last passage the 
exact parallel is in A. T, VI. vii: rh Bk Btucpua 
• • • ye\a. 

In Clitophon's garden (A. T., I. xv) "the tree 
was a support to the vine, and the vine was a 
garland to the tree." In Kalander's garden (Arc, 
I. iii., 9v.) there were beds of flowers under the 
trees, so that " the trees were to them a Pavilion, 
and they to the trees a mosaical floore." Leu- 
cippe singing the praises of the rose (A. T., II. 
i) calls it " the blush of the meadow." Sidney in 
describing the meadow where the shepherds' 
games were to be held (Arc, I. xix, 81) says 
" the Roses added such a ruddy shew unto it, as 
though the field were bashfull of his owne 
beautie." 



364 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Sidney's paraphrase here of the one word 
" blush " into a conceit about the meadow's bash- 
fulness, is typical of the freedom with which he 
treats his borrowings. In the foregoing examples 
it can hardly have escaped notice that he fre- 
quently imbeds the borrowed antithesis among 
antitheses of his own conceived in the same spirit. 
Elsewhere he shows abundantly that he has 
learned the trick; so that he infuses into the 
whole "Arcadia" a subtle flavor of Greek Ro- 
mance, often without borrowing any particular 
passage. For example, Pyrocles and Musidorus 
nobly contend (II. viii, 136) as to which shall die 
to save the other. 37 At length, "in this notable 
contention, (where the conquest must be the con- 
querors destruction, and safetie the punishment of 
the conquered), Musidorus preuayled." Again, 
in the battle between Amphialus and the royal 
army, many horses were killed (II. vii, 268) : 
" Some lay uppon their Lordes, and in death had 
the honour to be borne by them, who in life they 
had borne. The earth it selfe (woont to be a 
burial! of men) was now (as it were) buried with 
men: so was the face thereof hidden with dead 
bodies." Again, Pyrocles complains (II. i, 
102V.) : "To her whom I would be knowne to 
[viz. Philoclea] I Hue in darknesse: and to her 
[viz. Gynecia] am revealed, from whom I would 
be most secreat." Basilius in the course of the 

87 The same motif again in the trial scene (V. 480-481). 
It is not in the Greek Romances preserved to us, but came 
to Sidney, perhaps, from Boccaccio's Tito and Gisippo 
(Dec, X. 8) and so, mediately, through the " Legend of 
Two Friends," from a lost Greek Romance. (Cf. ante, p. 
358 ff.) 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 365 

siege of Amphialus's castle digs trenches leading 
to forts (III. xi, 285) "in such sort, as it was a 
prettie consideration in the discipline of warre, 
to see building used for the instrument of mine, 
and the assay ler entrenched as if he were be- 
sieged." The remnant of the rebels having taken 
Musidorus with Pamela (IV. 428), "All resolved 
to kill him, but now onely considering what maner 
of terrible death they should inuent for him. 
Thus was a while the agreement of his slaying 
broken by disagreement of the maner of it; and 
extremity of cruelty grew for a time to be the 
stop of cruelty." When Musidorus has been re- 
vived by the shepherds (I. i, 3V.) he tries to 
throw himself into the sea again in order not to 
survive Pyrocles: " — a strange sight to the shep- 
heards, to whom it seemed that, before, being in 
appearance dead had yet saved his life, and now, 
comming to his life shoulde be a cause to procure 
his death." 

The great frequency of such passages 38 pro- 
duces, as has been said, an effect of rhetorical 
strain throughout, and in the reader's total im- 
pression quite eclipses the other characteristics 
of Sidney's style. Once more the reader receives 
the impression that Sidney has learned the very 
accent of Greek Romance; once more he feels 
that Sidney has deliberately written Greek Ro- 
mance in English. 

83 Others of the same sort: I. ii, 7; I« "h iov. ; I. vi, 
27-27V. ; I. vii, 30V. ; I. x, 42V.; I. xvi, 70; II. iv, n6y._; 
II. xiii, 160; II. xxv, 213-213V. ; III. viii, 269V.; III. xviii, 
3 I S-3iSv. ("a braue raggednesse, and a riche povertie 
... a disgraced handsomnesse, and a, new oldnes"), HI. 
379. V. 450-1. 



366 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

And this is the abiding impression. The sepa- 
rate conclusions reached upon analysis of the 
"Arcadia" into its elements are confirmed upon 
a retrospect of the whole. Its material in plot 
and character, however diffuse and various, is 
held firmly within the Heliodorean frame ; its 
descriptive matter is strongly flavored with the 
Greek Romance e/c^paai^; its structure has been 
deliberately recast in the mould of Heliodorus; 
its style speaks with the voice of the Greek Ro- 
mancers. Sidney has domesticated the genre. 

Additional Notes 

(To pp. 312, 313) Heliodorus's story of Calasiris and 
his sons looks like a degenerate version of the myth of 
Oedipus, a version with a happy ending as far as the sons 
are concerned. If Calasiris is Oedipus travestied, we have 
a remarkable tradition, from Sophocles or earlier, through 
Heliodorus and Sidney, to Shakespeare. Not without 
deliberate intent, we feel, did Shakespeare choose this 
descendant of the story of Oedipus as a foil to the story 
of that other Oedipus, King Lear. 

(To p. 360) The antithesis " Banquet turns to Battle " 
also seems to be the subject of a remarkable tradition. 
Heliodorus's immediate source may well have been Ovid 
(Met. XII. 222-244), who also emphasizes the mingling of 
blood with wine, and the use of the wine-jars as missiles. 
Now it was at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia 
that this sudden turn occurred, the misconduct of the 
Centaurs changing the feast into a fight. It is thus sug- 
gested that the antithesis and its concomitant details are 
conventions associated with the treatment of the combat 
between the Centaurs and the Lapithae ; and, sure enough, 
in the representation of this combat on the metopes of the 
Parthenon, a Centaur appears in the act of hurling a 
wine-jar. We may reasonably suppose that the motif was 
often repeated in subsequent sculpture, gem-engraving, vase- 
painting, or wall-painting, if not in Alexandrian pictorial 
poetry. Thus it would reach Ovid, and, through him, 
Heliodorus, Sidney, and Sir Walter Scott (" Ivanhoe," ch. 
xli). Once more, the tradition handed on to modern times 
by Greek Romance dates back to a period of pure classicism. 



CHAPTER III 

Robert Greene 

The popular request for rapid work from 
Greene's pen, and the versatility of his own imi- 
tative talent for story-telling, sent him to many 
sources and subjected him to many influences. 
One of the most widely-read of the writers of 
his time, he was always in the fashion of the 
moment. He would, as Nash tells us, 1 "yark 
up " a pamphlet " in a night and a day " to meet a 
publisher's demand for a "best seller"; and he 
was nothing if not up to date. " Euphues " ap- 
peared in 1578 and '79, and in 1580 Greene was 
ready with " Mamillia " (licensed 1580 ; published 
1583), which out-Euphuizes " Euphues." Thence- 
forth the Euphuistic strain ran through all his 
books with greater or less strength, till he ex- 
cluded it abruptly and consciously from his 
" Conny Catching " series and from " The Black 
Bookes Messenger." His love of stylistic tinsel 
enabled him to appropriate easily the character- 
istics of Euphuism, and sometimes, in " Carde of 
Fancie," for instance, to add absurdities of his 
own. As with "Euphues," so with Sidney's 
"Arcadia." By the time the "Arcadia" in 
manuscript had made its way out of Sidney's own 
court circle into the Universities and the City 

1 "Foure Letters Confuted," Works, ed. Grosart, II. 221 ; 
ed. McKerrow, I. 287. 

367 



368 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

(that is, into the circle of Greene's readers) and 
had created a demand for its like, Greene was 
prepared to meet the demand. " Menaphon," pub- 
lished 1589, and "Philomela," published 1592, 
but, he says (Epistle Dedicatory, p. 109), "writ- 
ten long since," are his chief tributes to its popu- 
larity; the first satisfying the demand raised by 
the manuscript, the second that raised by the first 
edition (1590). Apart from the influence of the 
"Arcadia," Greene's own predilection for lowly 
and rural life would have sufficed to make him 
fall in with the pastoral taste of his time ; but his 
natural tendency toward pastoral was strength- 
ened by Sidney's work, and, like Sidney, he used 
his pastoral not as an independent tale, but 
either as an ornament to some inclusive story or 
or as a solvent for the complexities and a remedy 
for the troubles which afflict his personages in 
city or court. This scene of courtly people in 
the country belongs to the mediaeval stock of 
literary material quite as much as to that of the 
Renaissance; and is one of many mediaeval 
motifs in Greene. His virtuous shepherdess 
sends her highborn wooers about their business 
like any pastor ela; 2 into a story of Roman times 
he inserts the mediaeval rivalry of Knight and 
Clerk ; 3 several "situations" he takes from "Huon 
of Bordeaux " ; 4 now and again he uses the con- 

2 " Francescos Fortunes" (VIII), 184 ff, esp. 193-6: The 
Host's Tale. 

8 "Tullies Loue" (VII). 

*"Arbasto" (III): Captor's daughter falls in love with 
captive and releases him. " Carde of Fancie " (IV) : Cap- 
tive released fights gigantic enemy of captor, and gains 
captor's daughter to wife. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 369 

ventional Vision-form of the Middle Ages, 5 once 
together with the usual allegory of a garden, its 
variety of trees and birds, and Dame Venus stand- 
ing there; 6 but usually in combination with a 
debat. 7 So Greene ministered to the lingering 
mediaeval taste of Elizabethan readers. And 
here once more he was on common ground be- 
tween the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: 
for, regarded as a social diversion, the debat 
becomes the dubbio. The popularity of this 
Italian form was enhanced by the popularity of 
" Euphues," which made such large use of it ; 
and Greene employed it, too, but as a frame for 
narrative, which, after all, is his specialty. Many 
of his stories are told in social gatherings to 
illustrate some point in morals or love raised in 
a dubbio or dialogue. 8 He thus gave an edifying 
frame to novelle which are only incidentally 
edifying in themselves. The demand of Puritan- 
ism for stories that should be edifying in them- 
selves he satisfied by turning into novella-form 
the parable of the Prodigal Son, 9 and the apocry- 
phal book of Susanna — the latter twice. 10 His 
readers, in fact, must have the novella, which by 

8 " Quip for an Vpstart Courtier" (XI); "Greenes Vis- 
ion" (XII); "Orpharion" (XII); " Carde of Fancie " 
(IV), 74-6 (Allegorical Dream). 

6 "Mamillia" (II), 275. 

1 So in all the cases cited in notes 4 and 5 (supra). 
Greene uses a debat without a vision, in " Debate between 
Folly and Love" (IV), and " Planetomachia " (V). 

8 " Morando" (III); "Censure" (VI); "Penelopes 
Web" (V); " Perimedes " (VII); "Mourning Garment" 
(IX); "Farewell to Folly" (IX); and elsewhere. 

8 " Mourning Garment " (IX). 

10 " Mirrour of M'odestie " (III) ; " Francescos Fortunes *' 
(VIII). 

25 



370 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

means of its single " situation," its emphasis upon 
what happened, its want of profound character- 
ization, its want of complication in plot, and its 
simple setting, made a broad popular appeal. 
It is for these same reasons that the novella fell 
within Greene's powers. He, too, lacked "la 
longue haleine " ; he could never manage a plot of 
any considerable length or complication ; his char- 
acterization was nearly always shallow and un- 
motived ; and he was almost wholly destitute 
of the feeling for "background." Accordingly, 
Italian novelle were among his chief sources; and 
in time he learned from them how to make very 
good novelle of his own. 11 

Meanwhile he borrowed novelle, mainly from 
Boccaccio; and it is interesting to observe what 
he borrowed. Not counting allusions and minor 
resemblances, there are two tales which Greene 
took over bodily from the Decameron, with slight 
changes ; and a well-rounded incident, complete in 
itself, which he took from a third tale and em- 
bodied as an incident in a story of his own. lla 
These, as far as I am aware/are his only borrow- 
ings from the Decameron, and every one of 
these is, in all probability, like the plot of 
"Euphues," based upon some lost Greek Ro- 
mance. 

The first is Decam., II. 6, which Greene used 
as the first story in " Perimedes " (VII.) 23-42. 
The following is a summary of his version. 

11 E. g., Chaucer's story of Tomkins and Kate, in "Greenes 
Vision" (XII), and Roberto's story of the Farmer Bride- 
groom, in " Groats zorth " (XII). 

Uft Koeppel, pp. 52-54- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 37 1 

Mariana is the wife of Prestines, formerly gover- 
nor of Tyre, but now the prisoner of Voltarus, King 
of Sidon. Escaping from her husband's enemy, she 
is wrecked on the shore of Decapolis, while her sons 
are carried off by pirates. She lives in a cave, 
whither chance brings the Despot of Decapolis and 
his wife. She tells her story and is taken to live 
with them. The sons and their nurse are sold by 
the pirates to Lamoraq, governor of Japhet and 
brother to the Despot of Decapolis. The elder es- 
capes, comes at length to Decapolis, enters the 
Despot's service, and gets his daughter with child. 
Thrown into prison, he hears that Voltarus is being 
attacked, and exclaims upon his hard fate in not 
being able to help against his father's enemy. The 
jailor overhears him and gets his story, which he 
tells to the Despot. Upon confirmation of the story 
the young people are married ; the younger son, sent 
for from Japhet, is likewise married to the daughter 
of the Governor; and Voltarus having been over- 
thrown and Prestines restored, his wife and his sons 
and their wives rejoin him at Tyre. 

This is, substantially, Boccaccio's story of 
" Madonna Beritola Caracciola, moglie di Ar- 
righetto Capece (chi sotto il re Manfredi fu stato 
governatore di Sicilia ma fu fatto prigioniere dal 
re Carlo)." It is scarcely necessary to point to 
the familiar marks of Greek Romance. In the 
original there is an additional motif, which looks 
like a tortured Byzantine imitation of " Daphnis 
and Chloe." In her loneliness on the desert 
shore, Madonna Beritola finds two new-born kids, 
which she nurses. The Governor (Greene's Des- 
pot) and his wife come to hunt; and his dogs 
chase the kids, zvho flee to their foster-mother 



37* THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

and thus lead to her rescue. This is apparently 
an inversion and a perversion of Longus's motifs: 
"she-goat gives suck to human infant, and by 
retiring to place where infant lies, brings about 
its rescue ; goats are chased by hounds." Greene 
omits it, merely saying that when Mariana was 
found, she had with her a fawn which she had 
nursed up; but he leaves all the other evidences 
that the tale is based on Greek Romance. Per- 
haps an instinctive feeling that it is in this genre 
makes him change its locus to Tyre and Sidon, 
etc., and reunite the parents and the two newly 
married couples at Tyre, in reminiscence of the 
end of "Clitophon and Leucippe." That Boc- 
caccio likewise classified the tale correctly is 
shown by his placing it in the Second Day, among 
stories of evil Fortune turning to good, and by 
his introducing it individually with remarks upon 
the beneficial effect of hearing tales about the 
vicissitudes of Fortune. Landau ("Quellen," p. 
296) after mentioning the stock motifs of the 
Greek Romances, adds " mit denen [d. h. mit den 
griechischen Romanen] Boccaccio's Novellen von 
den drei Schwestern und ihren Liebhabern (IV. 
3), von Pietro Boccamazza (V. 3) and von der 
Familie Capece (II. 6) verwandt sind." 

Greene's next borrowing from Boccaccio is the 
Second Tale in "Perimedes" (VII.), 47~55 : 

On the island of Lipari, Constance and Alcimedes 
fall in love, but cannot wed because of his poverty. 
Desperately resolved to make his fortune, he becomes 
a corsair, but is taken by the Saracens and carried 
to Tunis. Rumor reports that he has been drowned. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 373 

Constance seeking death in like manner sets herself 
adrift in a small boat, but is wafted to the Barbary 
Coast, and makes her way in time to the city where, 
unknown to her, her lover is confined. Now a rebel- 
lious nobleman lays claim to the kingdom of Tunis, 
and Alcimedes in prison offers the King his services 
as general. These are accepted, and he defeats the 
rebel and is made a Duke. When the fame of this 
stroke of fortune brings Constance the news that he 
is alive, she discovers herself to him, and they are 
married. 

This, with unimportant changes, is Boccaccio's 
tale of Martuccio Gomito and Gostanza (Decam., 
V. 2). The story has a mediaeval tinge over- 
lying its probable Greek origin; and the motif 
"released prisoner assists his captor against an 
enemy," is found in " Huon of Bordeaux," as 
well as in the "Babylonica" of Iamblichus (ch. 
XX). 12 The stories of the Fifth Day, like those 
of the Second, concern lovers who have met good 
fortune after ill; and Fortune is active through- 
out this tale. 

The flavor of Greek Romance is strongest, per- 
haps, in the story of which Greene borrows the 
first incident — the story of Cimone and Efigenia 
(Decam., V. 1) : 

Cimone, a clownish youth of Cyprus, beholding 
Efigenia asleep on the grass, is by love of her trans- 
formed into an accomplished gentleman. As she is 
betrothed to a Rhodian, Cimone cannot gain her 

"Greene uses it again in " Carde of Fancie " (IV), 164, 
166, 191. Neither Greene nor Boccaccio could have taken 
it from Iamblichus (see table, ante, p. 8 ff.), unless, as is 
very unlikely, they saw a Ms. of Photius. 



374 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

hand by peaceful means. When she is sailing to be 
married in Rhodes, he attacks her ship, steals her 
away, and after several changes of Fortune (which 
constitute the bulk of the story), marries her. 

Boccaccio says that the story is " si come noi 
nelle antiche istorie de' Cipriani abbiamo gia 
letto " ; and Rohde (pp. 538-542) plausibly con- 
jectures that it comes from a lost Greek Romance, 
perhaps called the " Cypriaca." In any case it 
bears the unmistakable stamp of its kind; and 
we actually possess, in the episode of Callisthenes 
and Calligone (A. T., II. xviii; VIII. xvii), the 
same combination — though in reverse order — of 
transformation by love with piratical abduction 
of the beloved. Greene uses only the first of 
these motifs — transformation by love 13 for his 
episode of Fabius and Terentia, in "Tullies 
Loue" (VII.), 185-9; an d ne accounts for 
Fabius's change of character by a literal trans- 
lation of Boccaccio's corresponding account of 
Cimone's change: "Ye high vertues of the 
heauens infused into this noble breast, were im- 
prisoned by ye enuious wrath of Fortune, within 
some narrowe corner of his heart, whose bandes 
went asunder by loue, as a Lord to[o] mightie 
for fortune." Here Love conquers envious For- 
tune, but in the remainder of the story Fortune is 
said to be, and is, busy at every turn. 

Possibly unconscious of what he was choos- 
ing, Greene has thus chosen from the Decameron 

"He has used it again in " Carde of Fancie " (IV), 48- 
49. He alludes by name to " Boccaccio " and his story of 
"Chimon" in " Morando " (III), 91. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 375 

only Greek Romance material, and has used it 
almost exactly as he found it. Indeed, his talent 
in general has a distinct affinity to Greek Ro- 
mance. His unresisted tendency towards the 
pastoral lays him open to the influence of 
" Daphnis and Chloe." His peculiar combination 
of a love of pure plot,— of events for the sake 
of events, regardless of their spring in character 
and of their reaction upon character — his com- 
bination of such a love of plot with a weak sense 
of motive and causal nexus, strongly inclines him 
to employ Fortune as the mover of his plot. His 
pleasure in gaudy stylistic ornament exposes him 
to the infection not only of Euphuism, but of 
the rhetorical diseases inherent in the style of 
Achilles Tatius. Moreover, from the great spec- 
tacular ensemble scenes so frequent in Helio- 
dorus, he learns how to turn his rhetoric to ac- 
count, in long harangues and arguments, and in 
analysis of the emotions and facial expressions of 
the spectators. So that, amid Greene's variety of 
sources, it would be rather strange if he had not 
drawn upon Greek Romance. 

His indebtedness is primary as well as second- 
ary. As has been seen, Achilles Tatius was ac- 
cessible to him in Latin, Italian, and French 
translations, while Heliodorus and Longus may 
fairly be said to have become current English fic- 
tion during the time of his literary activity 
(1580-1592). In fact, as with " Euphues " and 
the "Arcadia," so with the Greek Romances, 
Greene's versatility and timeliness serve him well. 
" Daphnis and Chloe " in Day's version, and the 



376 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

" ^Ethiopica " in Underdowne's second or third 
edition, come out in 1587; and in 1588, Greene is 
on the spot with his best known story, " Pan- 
dosto" ("Dorastus and Fawnia") which is full 
of matter from both of them, and which draws 
somewhat upon Achilles Tatius as well. " Pan- 
dosto" thus possesses a two- fold interest — first, 
and chiefly, as the main source of " The Winter's 
Tale"; secondly, as exhibiting with the greatest 
fulness the influence of the Greek Romances upon 
Greene. Under both these aspects it will later be 
treated in detail, together with " Menaphon," each 
integrally as well as topically ; for each is a work 
whose various topics and sources should be as- 
sembled in order that justice may be done to the 
whole. Evidence of the influence of the Greek 
Romances upon Greene's other works will be 
arranged not according to the works in which it 
may occur, but partly according to its contents, 
that is, topically (as in the treatment of the 
Greek Romances themselves in Part First of the 
present study), and partly according to its sources 
among the Greek Romances. 

Despite Greene's leaning toward the pastoral, 
and fondness for pathetic ensemble-scenes, it is 
Achilles Tatius who affects him at the largest 
number of points, and is his first and latest love. 
Greene is particularly predisposed to take what 
Achilles Tatius can give. As a rhetorician, he 
shares the Renaissance fondness for antithesis 
and paradox. His only method of characteriza- 
tion is an antithetical soliloquy, dialogue, or letter 
by his personages, or antithetical comment by 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 377 

himself. He is not, of course, interested in char- 
acter, but such characterization as he does attempt 
resolves itself thus into an analysis of " conflict- 
ing emotions." 14 The mania for antithesis viti- 
ates his "psychology" by breaking up character 
into striving opposites. It vitiates both his style 
and the speech of his personages by turning both 
into a Euphuistic balancing of conceits and argu- 
ments. Wit and Will ; Virtue and Fortune ; Na- 
ture and Fortune ; Nature and Necessity ; Fancy 
and the Fates; Love and Destiny; Nature and 
Nurture; Desire and Despair; Beauty and 
Bounty; Beauty and Virtue; the Sore and the 
Salve; Outward Favor and Inward Valor; Rea- 
son and Passion; Bliss and Bale; Hand and 
Heart; Weal and Woe; Excellence, not Birth; 
Wit before Wealth; Mirth and Mourning; Love 
and Law; — these and a hundred other allitera- 
tive couples are forever see-sawing through his 
pages. 15 Like Achilles Tatius, he several times 
employs the device of rivalry; 16 he calls attention 
to a surprising event by means of the familiar 
irapa Sotjav 17 ; and he gives to his " unnatural 

"Conflicting Emotions: " Carde of Fancie " (IV), 55, 
180, 190; "Alcida" (IX), 94 (Hope vs. Fear); "Philo- 
mela" (XI), 203, and many other passages. 

IS "Mamillia" (II), 17, i9> 79, 9*. *34, 140; " Francescos 
Fortunes" (VIII), 223, 227, 228; "Mourning Garment" 
(IX), 131; "Farewell" (IX), 250; " Coosnage " (X), 6-7; 
" Blacke Bookes Messenger" (XI), 35: some passages on 
Wit and Will alone. On this cliche, see Mr. Sidney Lee's 
"Life of Shakspeare," p. 416 ff. 

""Tullies Love" (VII), 106; "Mourning Garment" 
(IX), 127; "Farewell" (IX), 256. 

""Censure" (VI), 194: " Comming thither, contrary to 
his expectation hee found that Time the mother of muta- 
bilitie, had made a strange metamorphosis." 



378 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

natural philosophy" the peculiar animistic turn 
which has been observed in Achilles Tatius, 18 
and which is not present in Lyly. It is difficult, 
too, to resist the feeling — though only a detailed 
examination of the styles in question can deter- 
mine its correctness — that Greene's homeophony 
is distinctly more elaborate than Lyly's, and may 
have had another model besides "Euphues." 
Such passages as the following seem to push 
" transverse " alliteration further than Lyly's 
furthest reach, and to use certain alliterative 
and assonantal " stanza- forms " or " rhyming 
schemes," so to speak, which he did not attempt. 

"Carde of Fancie " (IV.), 66: "Wert thou of 
late a defter of Venus, and art thou now a de- 
fender of vanitie?" (de f er of vn 

de f er of vn). 
ib., 92. "not his vad'mg riches, but his renowned 
vertues." (ntvd r ch s;trnd vrchs) 
ib., 46. " As the ioye of her presence procureth 
my delight, so the annoie of her absence breedeth 
my despight." 

" Planetomachia " (V.) 73: " No, hee had 
rather prevent her with untimely cteath then pre- 
tend such an unlikely ctemande : 

(pre en un 1 ly de 
pre en un 1 ly de) 

he would sooner consent to payn her with some 
hellish miserie then place her in such a hapless 

18 "Arbasto" (III), 237. Doralicia's froward answer to 
Arbasto's letter : " As by instinct of nature there is a se- 
crete hate between the vine and the cabash, between the 
boxe and the goord, and between the iron and ye Thea- 
mides, so in my mind I feel a secret grudge between Ar- 
basto and Doralicia." Cf. A. T., I. xvii, xviii ; ante, p. 210. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 379 

marriage." (pa her su hi m r 
p a her su hi m r). 

The resemblance to Antike Kunstprosa may be 
only accidental; Greene could not have seen the 
original Greek of Achilles Tatius in print, and 
it is unlikely that he saw it in Ms. I give the 
impression as such. 

Certainly not accidental, however, is the fact 
that Greene shares with Achilles Tatius the same 
faults in narrative technique. "Arbasto" con- 
sists of a " frame-tale " about the narrator's ship- 
wreck, and an inner tale — really the substance of 
the whole — told by Arbasto to the narrator. 
Both are related in the first person. But this 
plan is violated, first by Arbasto's report of the 
feelings and soliloquies of other persons (III. 
195-8, 215-217, 217, 223-226, 229, 245-248); 
next by his lapses into the third person when he 
speaks of himself (227) ; finally by the failure 
of the author, the supposed narrator of the 
frame-tale, to recur to it when Arbasto's story is 
done. He does not " envelop " Arbasto's story 
at the end, as he does at the beginning, by resum- 
ing the account of himself. As will shortly ap- 
pear, 19 the resemblance to " Clitophon and Leu- 
cippe" 20 is more than accidental. Finally, Greene 
the rhetorician never spares his readers a speech 
if he can help it. In " Carde of Fancie" (IV.) 
the two hostile kings harangue their respective 
troops at length (174-6). In "Penelopes Web" 
(V.), 81, " Egistus Oration to the Lords of 

"Post, p. 393. 
" Ante, p. 199. 



380 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Egypt" is thrown into prominence by a title of 
its own. In " Censure " (VI.), 224, " Cleophanes 
Oration to the Citizens " persuades them to admit 
besiegers to their city; (228-9) Cimbriana ex- 
horts her ladies to revenge; (257-8) Frontinus 
harangues his troops; (273) Roxander pacifies 
the people "with this briefe Oration"; and 
(276) one of the Senators seeing the soldiers 
careless and discouraged, " calling them all into 
the market made them this oration." In " Peri- 
medes" (VII.), 52-3, Alcimedes repeats to the 
King of Barbary's troops the speech of Frontinus. 
In "Tullies Love" (VII.) there is a tremendous 
talking-match, which ends with (213) "Tullies 
Oration to the Senate." In "Farewell" (IX.), 
345, Rustico in a speech rouses the citizens 
against their besotted Duke. In " Philomela " 
(XI.) there are no less than three trial scenes 
( 164 f¥., 186 fi\ and 203 fL), all adorned with 
" Orations." All things, it would seem, are pos- 
sible to Eloquentia. Greene's fondness for 
speechmaking he shares with his time, but he 
shares it too with Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius. 

The occasion for all this Eloquentia, the para- 
doxical or antithetical situation which gives 
rhetoric its opportunity, is by Greene, as by Helio- 
dorus and Achilles Tatius, often attributed to 
Fortune, or as by Longus, to Fortune and Love. 
" Fortune loves to bring about things unexpected 
and things contrary to expectation," 21 and when 
Greene speaks of her he tends naturally toward 
antithesis and oxymoron, balance and alliteration. 

^Aelian, " Var. Hist.," XIII. 33 (quoted ante, p. 357, n. 35.) 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 38 1 

"O Fortune, how constant art thou in thy in- 
constancie?" 22 In "Censure" (VI.), 196, Mae- 
dyna, the faithless wife of Polymestor, having 
refused to return to him, his nobles "thought 
their kinge happy that Fortune by ill fortune had 
at hazard giuen him such good fortune." Those 
who are down need fear no fall; but those in 
high places are especially subject to vicissitude ; 
hence, in " Pandosto" (IV.), 249, Queen Bellaria 
exclaims to herself : " How unfortunate art thou, 
because fortunate." In " Carde of Fancie" 
(IV.), 153, Gwydonius cries: "Who a late so 
floated in the flouds of felicitie as I, which now 
by the sinister meanes of frowning Fortune am 
sowsed in the seas of sorrow." And Castania 
(ib.j 182): "Let froward fortune favor whom 
she please, so I may ioy and safelie inioy my 
onelie ioy." 

Greene's subjection to the concept, nay to the 
word, " Fortune," far surpasses that of Achilles 
Tatius. Greene is Fortune's abject slave; he 
suffers from lues fortunae, or tychomania, a dis- 
ease which once having gripped its victim, blinds 
him to the true course of human affairs, and 
renders him incapable of ever building more than 
a novella-plot, or depicting a consistent character. 
Fortune has him in thrall. He attributes to her 
the plainest effects of a line of causes already 
begun — effects which are perfectly calculable and 
which exhibit not the slightest element of chance. 23 

a "Morando" (III), 127-8; again "Penelopes Web" 
(V), 178. 

23 " Never too Late " (VIII), 101. Francesco in the snares 
of Infida has been living riotously. " Wallowing thus in 



382 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

He attributes to her the gifts which, according to 
a distinction that was one of the commonplaces 
of mediaeval and Renaissance thought, really 
came from " Nature." 24 He drags her in at every 
possible or impossible place, simply as a cliche, 

the foldes of their owne follies, Fortune . . . dealt thus " : 
Francesco's money gave out ! There was no interference 
by Fortune — nothing but continued causation. In " Dispu- 
tation " (X), 246, the reformed courtesan says that as a 
young girl she had many suitors, but " either my fortune or 
destenie droue me to a worser ende, for I refused them 
all " : an act of human choice. In " Carde of Fancie " 
(IV), 134, "Fortune . . . brought it to pass" that Orlanio 
withheld his accustomed tribute, and so occasioned a war. 
But there was nothing fortuitous about it ; it originated in 
Orlanio's will. In " Planetomachia " (V), 89, Rodento and 
Pasylla having been betrothed, " Fortune grudging at this 
happy successe, crossed their sweete and delicious favours 
with bitter and despairing frowns. For Valdracko (Pa- 
sylla's father) . . . began to thinke " that this betrothal 
gave him an opportunity for vengeance upon the formerly 
hostile house of Rodento. But Valdracko had promoted the 
betrothal between his daughter and his enemy's son for 
that very purpose. Fortune was active only in his acci- 
dental finding of the young people's letters, which showed 
him that they were in love. Valdracko's own motive and 
agency, not Fortune, brings about the remainder of the 
tale. In "Philomela" (XI), 155, Philippo's jealous sus- 
picion of his wife is said to be the work of Fortune — and 
this after Greene has done his best to depict Philippo as 
suspicious and jealous by nature. In " Arbasto " (III), 
222, 231, 245, 252, the hero repeatedly ascribes to Fortune 
the clear effects of his own duplicity, ingratitude, and 
folly ; the story has for sub-title " the Anatomie of For- 
tune," and at the beginning we behold Arbasto, now in 
retirement after his troubles, robed in white satin and 
crowned with gold, weeping while he gazes upon a " coun- 
terfeit of Fortune," his scapegoat. 

24 " Penelope's Web" (V), 227. Ariamenes's eldest son, 
praising his wife, classifies her excellences as " the gifts of 
nature " and " the gifts of fortune " — a stereotyped dichot- 
omy. Then, among the gifts of fortune, he places the fact 
that she is " descended of honourable parentage " — a gift 
which of all gifts comes by birth, by natura. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 383 

meaning no more than "condition in life" or 
" change of affairs " or " difficulties or obstacles 
to be overcome " or " some reason or other why 
things happen as they do — some reason which I 
don't care to take the trouble to find out." 25 
This intellectual laziness leads Greene to employ 
" drag-net " or " blunderbuss " formulae when he 
wishes to be sure of including the true cause of 
his event: thus he often couples Fortune with 
Fate, the Destinies, the Gods, Time, Chance, 
Providence, Nemesis, Occasion, Opportunity, the 
Stars, Necessity, Nature and the like, indiscrimi- 
nately, without even attempting a distinction be- 
tween their respective agencies. 26 It would be 
hard to exaggerate the prominence of Fortune as 
an empty formula throughout the works of 
Greene. Quite apart from the numerous pas- 
sages — to be next discussed — where she is a vera 

25 It is hardly worth while to classify the passages that 
exemplify these cliches. A few — by no means all — are re- 
ferred to here. " Mamillia " (II), 61, 236. " Arbasto " 
(III), 203, 211, 215, 217, 226, 228, 239, 245, 246, " Carde 
of Fancie " (IV), 112, 28-9, 54-5, 93, 117, 120-1, 124, 141, 
144, 153, 182, 183, "Penelope's Web " (V), 151, 168, "Cen- 
sure" (VI), 192, "Pandosto" (IV), 283, 285, 308. 

26 "Alcida" (IX), 23. " Liuing thus contentedly, and as 
I thought armed against fortune, in that we foregarded our 
actions with vertue, the Fates, if there be any, or the des- 
tinies, some star or planet in some infortunate and cursed 
aspect, calculated ... ill hap to all my daughter's natiui- 
ties." " Morando " (III), 119 : " Men can neuer purely and 
simply enjoy the ease of any great prosperitie : but whether 
it bee Fortune, or the enuie of Destinie, or els the naturall 
necessitie of earthly things, their ease is allwaies inter- 
mingled with evil among the good." " Orpharion " (XII), 
14 : " Time hath many chaunces, the Fates their Canons 
tied to opportunity : Fortune her decrees variable, and love, 
many accidents." 



384 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

causa, and moves the plot or is the subject of a 
formal disquisition, or of a genuine personifica- 
tion with picturesque attributes ; quite apart from 
these, she appears on nearly every page. 27 Space 
fails for a fuller exposition of this subject. Any 
reader who opens Greene's works anywhere can 
see for himself how nearly Greene's tychomania 
amounts to an obsession. 

Apart from these empty or distorted uses of 
the word or concept " Fortune," there is a much 
more important and perhaps quite as bulky class 
of cases where Fortune is really used by Greene's 
imagination or his intellect. Now his intellect 
gives the subject a formal discussion — as in 
"Morando" (III), 127-141, where after dinner 
several members of the company discourse at 
length of the ways of Fortune. Now it expresses 
or hints at plausible relations between Fortune 
and Fate, Fortune and Providence, Fortune and 
Justice, Fortune and Nemesis, Fortune and Op- 
portunity, or, in general Fortune and other non- 
human forces. 28 Now it brings Fortune into rela- 

2T " Farewell" (IX), 256-264: eight pages, Fortune men- 
tioned fifteen times. " Menaphon " 45-52 : seven pages, 
Fortune mentioned twenty times. 

^"Carde of Fancie " (IV), 147, 184: The Fates or Des- 
tinies are opposed to Fortune ; she is unfavorable, but they 
are favorable and stronger and will prevail. lb., 78 : The 
Destinies are unfavorable, but the Gods favorable, Cf. 
" D. & C," IV. xxiv, and ante, p. 123, n. lb., 171-2: For- 
tune, the Destinies, the Fates, even the Gods must yield 
to justice and human desert. " Pandosto " (IV), 285 : " For- 
tune windeth those threedes which the Destinies spin " : 
assigns to Fortune a position of real power, but subordi- 
nate to the Destinies. So " Perimedes " (VII), 24-54. 
" Fortune, or some contrarie fate aboue fortune " and 
"Menaphon" (VI), 89: "Where God and fate hath vowed 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 385 

tion with man by assigning — expressly or im- 
pliedly — the varying functions of Fortune and 
Nature. 29 Now it touches more deeply the rela- 

felicitie, no adverse fortune may expel prosperitie." " Pene- 
lope's Web" (V), 150: "Fortune . . . having commission 
from angry Neptune to showe her inconstancie, kept 
(Ulysses) still from the end of his desires." " Planeto- 
machia" (V), 106: The eagle drops Rhodope's shoe into 
the lap of Psammetichus, " not by chance, but by some 
infortunate and dismall destiny " ; Aelian (" Var. Hist.," 
XIII, 33) expressly attributes it to Fortune. " Penelope's 
Web" (V), 190: Fortune as Nemesis: " Thoughtes aboue 
measure are either cut short by tyme or fortune." But on 
the other hand, "Censure" (VI), 172: "Men determine, 
but the Gods dispose : humaine actions are oft measured 
by will, but the censures from above are iust and per- 
emptorie : Fortune is a goddesse but hath no priviledge in 
punishing of faultes." Fortune controls Occasion or Op- 
portunity: "Censure" (VI), 185, 254; "Perimedes" (VII), 
38; "Tullies Love" (VII), 113. 

29 Meaning by " Nature " all those powers that make the 
human estate, especially at birth, but to a less degree 
throughout life, exclusive of " environment." " Environ- 
ment " is the province of Fortune. " Carde of Fancie " 
(IV), 107: "In despight of Fortune, Nature hath given 
you a loving heart." " Morando " (III), 135 "• Hannibal's 
hatred of the Romans was " nothing diminished through 
olde age, neither yet through the alteration of his estate 
and fortune, because the nature and qualities of manners 
(viz. moral qualities) continueth alwaies." " Mamillia " 
(II), 14: After enumerating Gonzaga's advantages of birth 
and station : " And yet for all these golden giftes of Na- 
ture, he was more bound vnto Fortune, which had bestowed 
vpon him one only daughter." But in "Censure" (IX), 
211, it is Nature that bestows the daughter. In "Mourn- 
ing Garment" (IX), 127, 128, Nature and Fortune vie with 
each other to confer gifts. "Farewell" (IX), 237: Far- 
neze's daughters " were beholding to Nature for beauty, to 
Fortune for wealth, and to the Gods for Wisdom and 
vertue." "Vision" (XII), 260: " Fayre Mistresse, whom 
Fortune hath made as miserable, as Nature hath formed 
beautifull. ... I praise Nature for her workmanship, [and] 
accuse Fortune for her tyrannic" Other passages : " Fran- 
cesco's Fortunes" (VIII), 195; " Farewell ". (IX), 256; 

26 



386 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

tions between human character or personality on 
the one hand and the forces of environment on 
the other, by way of the formula — ancient but 
informed by the Renaissance with new vitality — 
of Fortune and Virtue. 30 Now his imagination 

"Mamillia" (II), 97, 109, 282, 287; "Censure" (VI), 
183-4. 

30 Virtue meaning the powers of personality, thought of 
either as passively resisting or as actively opposing the 
force of circumstances. As before, circumstances or en- 
vironment are the province of Fortune. "Mamillia" (II), 
162: "The incomparable constancie of Mamillia, which was 
so surelie defenced with the rampier of vertue, as all the 
fierce assaults of fortune could no whit prevaile." " Vir- 
tue " may thus be associated or identified with any strong 
human quality : Constancy in love, as in the passage just 
quoted, and in " Carde of Fancie " (IV), 183, 184, 186. 
Courage: "Spanish Masquerado " (V), 258. Counsel: 
" Planetomachia " (V), 125; "Penelope's Web" (V), 
172-3; Prowess: " Censure " (VI), 243. Fortitude: "Cen- 
sure" (VI), 257; "Perimedes" (VII), 52-3; Wit: "Sec- 
ond Part of Connycatching " (X), in. Foresight: " Philo- 
mela " (XI), 115. Valor: " Orpharion " (XII), 84. Wisdom : 
" Mamillia," II, 288 ; " Censure " (VI), 202, 208. Though 
these qualities, summed up as " Virtue," are occasionally 
said, like " Nature," to cooperate with Fortune, they gen- 
erally resist her. One of Greene's favorite thoughts, closely 
connected with his tendency toward the pastoral and the 
simple life, is that Fortune can be "spited" by a silent 
and contented endurance of her flouts : she rejoices to hear 
her victims complain, but is grieved by their patient, con- 
temptuous silence. So "Perimedes" (VII), 12, 26; " Ar- 
basto" (III), 180-1, 250, 253; "Farewell" (IX), 262, 
264; "Censure" (VI), 217. The thought grows naturally 
out of Greene's favorite " situation " — a high born person 
in retirement or adversity. This is the genre " De Casibus 
Virorum Illustrium " ("Orpharion" (XII), 91-92: "The 
chaunces of fortune, and fall of Princes ") ; which Greene 
removes from its mediaeval association with tragedy, by 
giving it a happy ending and adorning it with classical 
sentiments about Fortune. The antithesis of virtus and 
fortuna, indeed, goes back at least as far as Sophocles, 
appears formally in Cicero and Virgil, as well as in Plu- 
tarch and later writers, and is exemplified in literally 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 387 

gives visual form, conventional or bizarre, tradi- 
tional or peculiar, to Fortune 31 personified. Fi- 
nally, his imagination, like that of Achilles Tatius, 
employs Fortune as a vera causa, the mistress of 
his plot, to begin his action, work its peripeteia, 
furnish its moments of suspense, and accomplish 
its denouement or catastrophe. Beyond this, 
Greene's use of Fortune cannot go, nor is it skil- 

innumerable passages in the literature and inscriptions of 
the Renaissance. A few instances of its formal occurrence 
in Greene may be noted: " Morando " (III), 130, 142, 
hints that Greene may have known of the antique origin 
of the formula. The Romans, it is said, " thought them- 
selves more beholding unto Fortune for the greatnesse and 
prosperitie of their Empire then to vertue," but " the Athen- 
ians placed vertue above Fortune." Other passages, in 
" Pandosto " (IV), 273; "Penelopes Web" (V), 159; 
"Menaphon" (VI), 1 (title-page); " Perimedes " (VII), 
61; "Tullies Love" (VII), 211 ; "Neuer too Late" (VIII), 
59, 61; "Mourning Garment" (IX), 122; " Alcida " (IX), 
23, 89, 93; "Philomela" (X), 169. The history of the 
formula strikes deep into the history of literature and of 
ideas, and is a subject rather for a volume than for a 
foot-note. 

S1 Fortune's wheel is no longer, as it was in Roman art, 
a mere symbol, an attribute for an august goddess to hold 
quietly in her hand or to lean upon. It has become during 
the Middle Ages, and it remains in Greene, an active in- 
strument upon which Fortune raises and lowers her vic- 
tims. So "Perimedes" (VII), 55-6; "Censure" (VI), 
174 ; " Arbasto " (III), 231 ; " Carde of Fancie " (IV), 123, 
125; "Morando" (III), 133-4. In the last-cited passage, 
and in "Alcida" (IX), 82, she stands upon a globe, and is 
winged — (cf. Diirer's engraving known as " Die grosse 
Fortuna ") ; in "Pandosto" (IV), 274, she is "plumed 
with Times feathers"; in "Farewell" (IX), 256, she is 
" like the picture of I anus, double faced " ; ib., 264, she is 
blinded by her own spite; in " Mamillia " (II), 78, she is 
blind again; in "Arbasto" (III), 179, her "counterfeit" 
shows her " with one foot troade on a polype fish, and 
with the other on a camelion, as assured badges of . . . 
mutabilitie." This is a pure " emblem." 



388 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

ful or consistent as it stands; but so far it cer- 
tainly does go ; and not all his trumpery can con- 
ceal the fact. 

The only one of these intellectual or imagina- 
tive uses of Fortune that need occupy us further 
is the last. Greene uses three times the device of 
a soliloquy overheard : in " Carde of Fancie " 
(IV), 153 ; in " Perimedes, ,, and in " Philomela " 
— a device distinctly fortuitous. In the first in- 
stance, he says, " frowarde Fortune brought it so 
to passe, that Valericus [who was Gwydonius's 
rival and sought occasion to ruin him] coming 
by the chamber of Gwydonius," heard him reveal 
the fact that he was the son of the Duke's enemy. 
A cruel father's finding of his daughter's love- 
letters is also contrived by Fortune. " Planeto- 
machia" (V), 81: Rodento having told his love 
to Valdracko's daughter Pasylla, and received 
from her a not unfavorable reply, " Fortune . . . 
thought to lift him up to ye skies, yt she might 
wt more violence push him down lower than hel, 
and to bring this to passe she thus laid her plat- 
forme. It fortuned " that Valdracko found Ro- 
dento's letter and a copy of Pasylla's — an event 
which set him plotting the atrocities that lead on 
to the remainder of the tale. Fortune is here a 
vera causa. So she is in "Perimedes" (VII), 
27 (Boccaccio's story of Madonna Beritola). 
Whereas Boccaccio had brought about his peri- 
peteia by means of a semblance, at least, of nat- 
ural causes, — letting the hounds drive one of 
Beritola's kids to her protection, and thus effect- 
ing her discovery and rescue, — Greene left this 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 389 

matter to pure chance: "Fortune not brooking 
her owne bitterness, seeing how patient the Ladie 
[Mariana] was in her miserie, determined to add 
some relief to her passions, which she brought to 
passe in this manner. The Despot of Decapolis 
and his wife . . . being one day rode on hunting, 
by chaunce . . . lost their way, and happened into 
that desert, where they . . . met Mariana." Earlier 
in the story, Fortune had charge of the ship- 
wreck, lb., 23 : " fortune who ment to make her 
a mirrour of hir inconstancie, as it were entring 
into a league with Neptune, drove hir upon the 
coast of Decapolis." It is, of course, one of the 
inalienable rights of Fortune to cast people upon 
strange shores. She does this likewise in "Al- 
cida" (IX), 15, according to one of Greene's 
drag-net or blunderbuss assertions : " Whether our 
unhappy Fortune, the frowardnesse of the Fates, 
the constellation of some contrary Aspect, or the 
particular destinie of some unhappy man had so 
decreed . . . our barke by chance fell upon the 
coast of Taprobane." This prerogative of For- 
tune is well recognized by all who take ship. In 
"Philomela" (XI), 172, "As the poore Coun- 
tesse . . . little regarded to what port of Christ- 
edom the bark made, . . . she slipt awaie . . . 
and getting aboorde vnder saile, commit [ted] 
her selfe to God, the mercie of the Seas, and to 
the husband [ry] of manie hard fortunes." So 
did Achilles Tatius's eloping party (II. xxxi). 
Fortune uses her control of wind and wave in a 
spirit of irony. In "Censure" (VI), 189, when 
Maedyna and Vortymis planned to elope, " For- 
tune willing under the suppose of their felicitie 



390 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

to hide the very substance of their myserie, 
brought the wind about . . . faire for Samos." 
She seems to possess a sort of grim sportiveness. 
Maedyna had nursed her guilty passion for Vor- 
tymis in secret (ib.), 185, "till at last fortune 
willing in a sweete figge to present hir bitter 
wormewoode, found such fit opportunity, that 
Vortymis and shee met alone." The same pas- 
sage is repeated almost verbatim about Procidor 
and Marcella, in " Perimedes " (VII), 38. After 
the death of Cimbriana's father, in " Censure" 
(VI), 217, " Fortune seeing the Lady not greatly 
checked with this mate, thought to sport [her] 
selfe in the tragicall mishappe of this young prin- 
cesse," and so brought fresh troubles upon her. 
A courtier, a shepherd, and a clown love the shep- 
herdess Mirimida, and each writes her a letter. 
"Francescos Fortunes" (VIII), 204: "Thus had 
Fortune (meaning to be merrie) . . . brought it 
to passe that the three letters from the three rivals 
were deliuered at one instant." Fortune brings 
about a serious coincidence as easily as a comic 
one. Philomela living in retirement in Palermo 
is being sought by her father, her husband and 
her friend. " Philomela " ( XI ) , 193 : " It chaunced 
that either by Fortune or destinie " all three ar- 
rived in that city at the same time. So malevo- 
lent is the goddess in her grim irony that she 
baits traps for mankind. In " Penelope's Web " 
(V), 189, the dethroned Queen sends warning 
verses to the usurper. 

" Take heed, Ambition is a sugred ill, 
That fortune layes, presumptuous mynds to spill/' 

But if she is " varium et mutabile semper," that 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 39 1 

very fact brings consolation ; for she will change 
as well at her worst as at her best; hence, in 
misery men may look for a happy turn. It is 
thus that Lamedon comforts Sephestia after their 
shipwreck (" Menaphon" (VI), 45-7); and it 
is thus, in " Carde of Fancie " (IV), 160, when 
Valericus and Thersandro are sent separately to 
apprehend Gwydonius as a traitor, that " For- 
tune, who after euery chip of mischaunce sendeth 
some lot of good lucke, and after euerie storme 
of adversitie, sendeth a quiet calme of prosper- 
itie," arranged for him to be met and arrested 
not by his enemy but by his friend, who let him 
escape. 

Typical of this real activity of Fortune is an 
important incident in "Pandosto" (IV), 296. 
The shepherd, Fawnia's foster-father, has left 
home meaning to disclose to the King (Dorastus's 
father), the circumstances under which Fawnia 
had been found. Had this errand been accom- 
plished, the King would have learned of Fawnia's 
royal birth and would doubtless have consented 
at once to her marriage with his son. " But as 
[Porrus] was going, fortune (who meant to 
showe him a little false play) prevented his pur- 
pose in this wise. He met by chaunce" the 
Prince's servant, bound for the ship on which 
Dorastus and Fawnia were already embarked. 
The servant feigning that the King was on the 
ship, persuaded the shepherd to come aboard; 32 
and of course kidnapped him and prevented the 
disclosure. Hence neither of the kings knew 
Fawnia, and her own father was about to put 

^Autolycus, meeting the shepherd, performs the same 
function in " Winter's Tale," IV. iv, 824. 



39 2 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

her to death. The moment of last suspense in 
the tale (see post, p. 426) is thus directly brought 
about by the agency of Fortune, both in kidnap- 
ping Porrus and in wrecking the lovers upon the 
coast of Bohemia. 

Such are some of the aspects which Fortune — 
never, one may say, absent from Greene's mind — 
assumes according as she is more or less removed 
from his " focus of consciousness." Far from the 
focus, and seen with the tail of his eye, she is a 
word, ready to be applied anywhere, anyhow, 
either without a meaning or with a meaning con- 
trary to the realities of the case. Approaching 
the focus, she becomes a quasi-r taHty, half visible 
and related with some plausibility to other ab- 
stract quasi-realities, human and non-human. In 
the focus, she is a genuine force, very skilful 
indeed to make things happen, and to put Greene's 
personages into interesting situations: she is the 
mistress of his plot. In all these aspects, in the 
breadth of their range, and, throughout that 
range, in the enormous frequency of Greene's 
mention of Fortune, there is a strong resemblance 
to Achilles Tatius. 33 

Were there no certain evidence of direct bor- 
rowing by Greene, the similarities just set forth 
— similarities in rhetoric and style, and in the 
use and abuse of Fortune — would at least prove 
a strong mental kinship between the two writers, 
would show that Greene was inclined, was ready, 
to be influenced by Achilles Tatius. They would 
probably do more: their cumulative effect would 

88 Other aspects of Fortune in Greene seem to be derived 
from Heliodorus, and still others from Longus. They will 
be treated hereafter. See pp. 409 ff. and 43s ff. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 393 

be to raise at least a presumption of actual in- 
fluence. However this may be, the matter is 
placed beyond doubt, and the probability ren- 
dered a certainty, by the direct borrowings now 
to be set forth. 

It was said (ante, p. 379). that the presence 
in " Clitophon and Leucippe " and in " Arbasto " 
of the same faults in narrative method, was no 
accident. The simple fact is that Greene took 
his framework bodily from the Greek romance. 
In both, the narrator is tempest-tossed ; arrives at 
Sidon; makes a thank-offering ; makes it to the 

goddess whom the { , s^nlans "} Cal1 AstarU) 
then goes about looking at the sights ; sees a pic- 

, f" Fortune "1 
ture exhibiting the power of j « Love » j ; sees, 

close by, a man moved by the sight of that pic- 
ture ; asks the man to tell his story ; meets with 
some reluctance on the part of the stranger ; but 
at length hears the story, which is a story of 

. . f " Fortune " 1 
sufferings occasioned by j "Love" J* 

Following are the passages arranged parallel : 

"Arbasto" (III). 178 ff. "Clitophon and Leu- 
(Opening of story.) cippe," I. i, ii. 

(Opening of story.) 

" Sayling towards Can- % / 

die, 84 after that I had long StSw ctu daXarrt} ™Us • 
time been tossed with in- - 'Evravtfa rjKw U ttoX- 
fortunate tempests, forced \ov xct^wvo?, 

84 The phrase " sayling towards Candie," is Greene's trans- 
lation of a part of Achilles Tatius's e«*p <rs of Europa 
(likewise at the beginning of "Clitophon and Leucippe"), 
and occurs, ipsissimis verbis, in Greene's rendering of the 
Europa passage, in his " Morando." See post, p. 399. 



394 



THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 



by wind and waue, our 
course not well guided by 
our compasse, happily ar- 
riued at the city of Sy- 
don, where being set on 
shoare, I straight with my 
companions, went to offer 
incense to ye goddesse of 
prosperitie, which the cit- 
izens call Astarte. Whith- 
er being come, my deuo- 
tions done, and my obla- 
tions offered up, desirous 
to take a view of the an- 
cient monuments of the 
Teple, I passed through 
many places, where most 
sumptuous sepulchres 
were erected: which being 
seene, as I thought to have 
gone to my lodging, I 
espied a Cel, having the 
dore ope: [wherein sat an 
old priest clad in satin 
and crowned with gold, 
who] leaned his heade 
vpon his right hand, powr- 
ing forth streames of 
watrish teares, as out- 
ward signes of some in- 
ward passions, and held 
in his left hand the coun- 
terfeit of fortune. . . . 
Willing to knowe both the 
cause of his care, and 
what the picture of For- 
tune did import, [I asked 



(raxrrpa tdvov ifxavrov rrj 
twv &owiK<xiv 6ea. 'A<r- 
rdprrjv avrrjv ot SiSwviot 
Ka\ov(TLV. Kai irepuiov 
ovv Kal rrjv aWrjv 7roA.1v 

Kal 7rcptcrK07ro>v ra. avaBrj- 
fiara, 



6pu> ypa<f>rjv [viz. of the 
Rape of Europa. When 
I exclaimed upon the 
power of love,] veaviV- 
kos Kal avros 7rapcarTu><s, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 395 

him for his story, and 'Eyw ravr av iSeUvw, 
though he rebuffed me, I €<j>r), roo-avTas vj3pas e£ 
persisted.] p. 183: If the Zpuros 7ra0wv. Kat ri 
praier of a poore stranger TrcVovflas, ei7rov, a>ya#e; 
might preuaile to per- He hesitated ; but soon 
swade you to vnfold the told me what he had 
cause of these your sud- suffered at the hands of 
den passions, I shoulde Love. 
thinke my former trauels 
counteruaile[d] with this 
your friendly curtesie." 
Finally, he did tell me 
what he had suffered at 
Fortune's hands. 

"Arbasto" was published in 1584; and so, 
probably, were " Carde of Fancie " and Part I 
of "Morando." "The card of phantasie " ap- 
pears in the Stationers' Register on April 
11, 1584. Of "Morando" Grosart mentions 
(Greene, Works, III. 44) a "Part 1st, of 1584, 
in the Bodleian"; and Storojenko (ibid. I. 75) 
argues against any later date for the first edition, 
as the Earl of Arundel, to whom it is dedicated, 
"was committed to the Tower for high treason 
in the following year." Both books were cer- 
tainly printed in 1587; but if they first appeared 
in 1584, that year saw the publication of all of 
Greene's work containing direct transcription 
from Achilles Tatius. 

In " Carde of Fancie " one of the heroines is 
Lewcippa; her father, the Duke of Metelyne, is 
Clerophontes. 35 Her brother makes his way to 

88 If Greene used an Italian version of Achilles Tatius, 
the name Clerophontes may have come, with the change 
of one letter, from Clitofonte or Cletofonte. " Thersandro " 
points to an Italian form. 



39 6 



THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 



Alexandria, enters the service of the Duke there, 
and becomes the friend of the Duke's son Ther- 
sandro, who afterwards marries Lewcippa. The 
daughter of the Duke of Alexandria is placed in 
charge of a widow named Melytta. In "Mo- 
rando" Greene uses the names " Panthia," " La- 
cena," and " Sostrata." 

In " Carde of Fancie " Greene puts into the 
mouth of Valericus,. as a soliloquy, the invective 
of Clinias against women. 



" Carde of Fancie " 
(IV), 37, 39-40 

..." Call to minde what 
miseries, what mischiefes, 
what mishappes, what 
what woes, what wailings, 
murthers, what care, what 
calamities haue happened 
to such as haue beene be- 
sotted with the balefull 
beautie of women. . . . 
What careless inconstan- 
cie ruled Eriphila? What 
currish crueltie reigned in 
Philomela? How incestu- 
ous a life led A euro pa? 
And how miserable was 
that man that married 
Sthuolea? What gaines 
got Tereus in winning 
Progne, but a loathsome 
death for a little delight? 
Agamemnon in possessing 
the beautie of Crecida, 



"Clitophon and Leu- 
cippe," I. viii 

• • • rjyvous av to. tS>v yv- 
vauc&v Spd/xara • vvv <5e 
kcLv aAAois Xtyots, 6<t(dv 
iveirXyjcrav fJivOuv ywatKCs 
rr)v (TK-qvyv. 'O op/xo? 



]&pi<f>v\r)s, &i\ofAq\t)<; fj 
Tpdire^a, !§0evo/?oias ff 

BiafioXr), 'Acpo7nys r\ 



KkoTrrj, UpoKvrjs 17 <j<t>ayiq. 

Av to Xpvo~r)i&o<z /caAAos 

Ayafiefxvwv Trodrj, Xoifibv 

tois "EWrjcri ttoicl' av to 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



397 



caused the Grecian armie 
most grieuouslie to be 
plagued. Candaules was 
slaine by his murthering 
wife whom so intirely he 
loued. Who was thought 
more happie than the hus- 
bande of Helena, and yet 
who in time lesse fortu- 
nate ? What hapless 
chances insued cf the chas- 
titie of Penelope? What 
broiles in Rome by the 
vertue of Lucreciaf The 
one caused her sutors, 
most horrible, to be slaine, 
and the other that Tar- 
quine and all his posteritie 
were rooted out of their 
regall dignities. Phaedra 
in louing killed her hap- 
less sonne Hippolitus, and 
Clitemnestra in hating 
slewe her loving husband 
Agamemnon. Alasse Va- 
lericus, how daungerous is 
it then to deale with such 
dames, which if theyloue, 
they procure thy fatall 
care: and if they hate 
thee, thy finall calamitie? 



Bpio-r/iSo? koAAos 'A^tA.- 
Acvs, 7revdo<s avT<5 irpo£- 
evet • lav exv y wai/co. Kav- 
$av\r)$ Kakrjv, <f>ovevei 
KavSavAryv ^ yvvrj. To 



fx\v yap 'EAey^s twv yd/xiov 
Trvp avrjif/e Kara. rrj<s Tpoias 



aAAo icvp • 6 Se HrjvcXo- 
irrjs ydfios rrjs <Tw<f>povos, 

7TOCTOVS VVfX<j>LOV<S a7ra)- 

Aecrev; 



'A7reKTeivev c l7riro- 
\vtov <f>i\ovcra 3>cu8pa, 

KAvTaijU-vrjorpa 8' 'Aya- 
jxe/xvova fir) <f>i\ov<ra. CI 
itdvra toA/awo-cu ywatKCS • 



KO.V ffuXuHTl, <j>OVeVOV(TL ' 
KOLV (XT] <f)L\w<n, <f>OVCVOV(TL. 



Greene substitutes Lucrece for Briseis, and 
transposes Sthenoboea (misprinted " Sthuolea") 
and Aerope ("Aeuropa"). Otherwise his list 
reproduces Achilles Tatius's, and in the same 



398 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

order, dulling its edges with generalization, but 
sharpening them again in the antithesis at the end. 
Again, in " Carde of Fancie," Castania under 
stress of conflicting emotions compares her case 
to that of Achilles Tatius's Sicilian spring, where 
water and fire mingle : 

" Carde of Fancie " " Clitophon and I ,eu- 

(IV), 80 cippe," II. xiv 

"In which cursed case To yow tt}s SuceAudjs 

alasse my care consisteth, irrjyrjs v8<op KCKepaa-fievov 

for as out of the river t-^u -xvp' kcu cf>\6ya pkv 

Cea in Sicillia bursteth ot//€i Karoidev air avTtj<: 

most fearefull flames, and aWofievrjv avo>0ev. 0L- 

yet the streame is passing yovn hi trot to vSuyp, 

colde, neither is the water if/vxpbv io-rw olovn-ep xtwv, 

able to quench the fire, kcu ovt€ to irvp virb tov 

nor the fire cause the wa- vSaros KaTao-fiewvTai, 

ter to be hotte, so the ovtc to v&uip V7r6 tov irvpbs 

heate of hope flameth out <j>\eyeT<u ••• 
of the chilling fountains 
of feare." 

Greene uses the same paradox twice more. In 
"Alcida" (IX), 59, Meribates, who is cruising 
about, comes by chance to Taprobane and falls 
in love. He soliloquizes : " Soughtest thou to 
abide the pleasures of Neptune, and art faine to 
stand to the courtesie of loue ? Hast thou found 
flames amidst the waues? Fire in the water 
. . .?" In "Never too late" (VIII), 51, part 
of "Isabells Ode": 

" Her eies carried darts of fier, 
Feathred all with swift desier, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



399 



Yet foorth these fierie darts did passe 
Pearled teares as bright as glasse, 
That wonder twas in her eine 
Fire and water should combine." 

The longest of Greene's direct transcriptions 
is taken, like the frame of "Arbasto" (ante, p. 
393), from Achilles Tatius's opening chapters, 
which seem to have appealed strongly to Greene. 
Now, in " Morando," it is the romancer's €/c<ppacris 
of Europa that he copies. 



"Morando" (III), 56-7 

Signior Peratio spied 
hanging in the Parler a 
Table most curiously 
painted: wherein both the 
sea and the land was most 
perfectly pourtraied. The 
picture was of Europa, 
the sea of the Phenicians 
and the land of Sydon: 
On the shoare was a beau- 
tifull Medow, wherein 
stood a troupe of daintie 
Damosels: in the Sea a 
Bull, upon whose backe 
sat a Dame of surpassing 
beautie, sailing towards 
Candie,™ but looking to 
the crew of her compan- 
ions from whom by sinis- 
ter meanes she was sep- 
erated. The painter by 
secrete skill had perfectly 
with his Pensill desciph- 
m " Sailing towards Candle " 



"Clitophon and Leu- 
cippe," I. i, ii 

i. 6pw ypa<j>r]v avaKeipivrjv 



yrj<S afia Kal 6a\a.TT7j<s. 

Evpu)7rr}s r} ypacj>rj. <I>oi- 
viKoiv f) daXacrcra • StSwvo? 

v rn • m 

Ev tq yrj Xufiiov Kal 
\opos Trapdivoiv. 

*Ej/ rrj OaXaTTrj ravpos 
tvrjyero, Kal rot? vcotois 
Ka\r) irapOzvos i7r€Ka.9r)To, 

€7rt K.prjrr)v tw ravput 
7rAeovcra ••• . 'Ev o\ tw 
tov Xei/xwvos reXct tt/dos 
rats C7Tt BaXaTTav rrjs yr}<s 
€K/3o\aZ<s tol? irapOevovs 
Ira^ev 6 Ttyyir-qs. To 
cryripua reus irapdcvois Kal 
see ante, p. 393, n. 34. 



400 



THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 



ered the feature of their 
faces, as their counte- 
nance did seeme to im- 
porte both feare and hope. 
For seeing their Peereles 
Princesse a praie to such 
a prowling Pyrate, they 
rusht into the seas (as 
willing to be partakers of 
their Mistresse miserie) 
as far as feare of such 
feareful surges would per- 
mit them, but pushed 
backe with the dread of 
present daunger, they 
stood vewing how cun- 
ningly and carefully the 
Bull transported his 
charge: How Euro pa 
araied in purple roabes 
sat securely and safely 
holding in her right hand 
his home, and in her left 
his taile. About him the 
Dolphins seemed to leape, 
the Syrens to sing, and 
Triton himself e to tri- 
umph. Cupid also in the 
forme of a litle boy was 
there most curiously paint- 
ed, hauing the wings spred, 
a Quiuer by his side, in 
one hand a flame of fire, 
in the other a chaine of 
gold wherwith he drew 
the Bull as by constraint, 
and turning his head to- 



Xapas koX <fi6/3ov ••• tovs 
6(f>daX/xov<s avoitjaaai 7rpos 
Trjv OdXaacrav • ••• ras 
Xetpas ws on rov fiovv 
wpeyov. E7T€^atvov axpas 
Tr}<s 8a\dTTr)<;, 6<rov VTrepd- 
v(n fxiKpbv ruiv rapcrwv virep- 
e^etv to KvpxL • i^Keaav 8« 
(3ovXecr8ai pikv ws crri tov 

TCLVpOV SpafJLCLV, <f>O^CL(T- 

dai Bk Trj OaXdrrr) 7rpoaeX- 
Otiv •••. Tavpos iv p-ecry 
Trj daXdrrr) iytypairTO 

TOLS KvpXHTLV e7TO^OV/i,eVOS 

••• 'H 7rap0evos /mcVois 
€7ra<d0r)To rots vwtois tov 
(3ob<s ••■ Trj Aaia rov Kep(os 
i^op-evrj ••• ij \Xxuva irop- 
<f>vpa ••• 

At X^P 6 ^ ttfW^>0) 8t€T6- 

Tavro, rj pxv eirl Kepas, 
rj 8' €7r* ovpav •••. TLepl 
Se rov j3ovv u>p)(OvvTO SeX- 
<£tves, tiro.i£,ov "Epwres •••• 
"Epos elXxe rov fiovv> 
*E/>a>s, paxpbv rraiSiOv, 



f)Tr\wK€l TO 7TTC/0OV, TjpT'qTO 

(fraptTpav, lK.pa.Tti to trvp- 

<7T€0"Tpa7TTO 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



4OI 



wards Iupiter seemed to 
smile at his follie, and to 
despise his deitie, that by 
this means he had made 
such a strange Metamor- 
phosis. 

Signior Peratio hauing 
long gazed on this gor- 
geous picture, both praised 
his perfect skill that had 
so cunningly made a coun- 
terfeit of Nature by arte, 
and also mused at the 
force of Loue that had by 
conquest caught so wor- 
thie a Captiue, that at 
length as one forced by 
affection he sighing said: 
O Gods that a childe 
should rule both the 
heauen, the sea and the 
land. Don Silvestro see- 
ing Peratio so sodainlie 
passionate with the view 
of a simple picture, taking 
occasion herupon to enter 
into further parle began 
to crosse him on this 
maner . . . 



Alia kcu vire/u.ei8ta, wcrirep 
avrov KarayeXwv on oV 
avrov yeyove fiovs. 



ii. 'Eyw Se kcu raXXa 
ucv iiryvovv rrjs ypaa^rjs, 



are 8' wv epoiriKos Trepiep- 
yorcpov cfiXeirov rdv 
ayovra tov fiovv "Epwra • 



KCU OlOV, C17TOV, oipX eL 

/8oe<£os ovpavov kcu y>}s 
kcli 6a\aTTY)S. Tavrdfxov 
Xiyovros, veavicrKos kcu 
avros 7rapecrTa)s ■•* e<f>r) 
••• kt\. 



The foregoing passage is notable, as being the 
only e/c<f)pacTi$ in Greene. Later in the same 
novel, "Morando" (III), 133-4, there is, to be 
sure, a formal description of Fortune, which pro- 
fesses to reproduce a painting of her "in the 
27 



402 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Duke of Florence chamber " ; but the moralizing 
commentary accompanying this description as it 
proceeds, together with the verses said to be ap- 
pended to the picture, leave no doubt that it is an 
Emblem 37 rather than a true %tc<f>pao-i<;. 

In still another passage of the same novel — 
"Morando" (III), 77 — one of the personages 
having remarked upon the suddenness of love is 
asked what made him think of that, and replies : 

"The picture of Andromeda and Perseus, which 
hangs here before mine eyes, brought this to my 
remembrance, for me thinke [sic] either Andro- 
meda was passing beautifull, or Perseus verie amor- 
ous, that soaring aloft in the ay re he did firmlie 
loue before he did fullie looke, his eyes were scarce- 
lie fixed ere his hart was fettered." 

— A brief allusion to a picture which Achilles 
Tatius gives in full (A. T., III. vi, vii). Greene 
lets pass the chance for another €/c<f>pa,(Ti$. 

In fact, Greene's talent does not lie that way. 
He is distinctly deficient in descriptive power, 
and seems to want almost wholly the feeling for 
scenic " background." As will be observed later, 38 
he fails when he tries to write a spectacular 
Heliodorean ensemble-scene. His one description 
of landscape 39 is brief and runs off into frigid 

87 " Winged she was, and standing upon a gloabe, as 
deciphering her mutabilitie. ... In the left hande, a wheele, 
which she tourneth about continually . . . thereby giving 
us to understand," etc. The verses end with this couplet : 

" Which embletne tels vs the inconstant state, 
Of such as trust to Fortune or to Fate." 
88 Post, pp. 417-421. 
""Menaphon" (VI), 36 ff. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 403 

mythology. He has something else instead of 
the visual sense: he has an unfailing sense for 
incident, and will tell what happened (not a bad 
substitute) ; together with an unfailing didactic 
vein (a very bad substitute indeed). The first 
leads him to change subtly the description of 
Europa even while he transcribes : his non-sen- 
suous, non-descriptive, but narrative talent rejects 
the purely descriptive, elaborately sensuous de- 
tails of Achilles Tatius's picture, while it requires 
him to keep those details which tell the story. 
The second — his tendency to moralize — here re- 
tains the details that are emblematic of the 
power of love, which he, like his original, means 
to make the theme of further discourse. This 
allegorizing didactic vein finds the fullest expres- 
sion in the Emblems that are scattered broadcast 
up and down Greene's pages, instead of true 
visual imagery. 40 Greene's one truly pictorial 
description, — the " Europa " — is not his own, but 
is borrowed whole from Achilles Tatius; and 
although in the same novel with it are two other 
suggestions foreV<£/>aW?(the " Fortune" and the 
"Perseus and Andromeda"), yet Greene's weak 
visual imagination can not be roused, even by the 
highly pictorial Achilles Tatius, to make more 
than an allusion out of the one and an emblem 
out of the other. 

There remain in Greene's works a number of 
incidents and motifs whose provenance might 
perhaps be in doubt if Greene's acquaintance with 
" Clitophon and Leucippe " were in doubt, but 

40 Cf. S. L. Wolff, " Greene and the Italian Renaissance," 
Englische Studien, vol. 37, pp. 364, 369-72. 



404 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

which may now safely be ascribed to the influ- 
ence of Achilles Tatius. Several of these occur 
in " Carde of Fancie," one of that group of three 
books, — the other two being " Arbasto " and 
" Morando " — which, belonging to the early mid- 
dle years of Greene's literary activity (1584- 
1587), show Achilles Tatius's influence upon him 
at its height. Guydonius, in a soliloquy over- 
heard by his enemy Valericus, discloses both his 
parentage and his love affair with Castania 
("Carde of Fancie," IV. 153-7). So in A. T., 
VI. xvi, Leucippe, in a soliloquy overheard by 
her enemy Thersander, discloses both her par- 
entage and her love affair with Clitophon. The 
defiant tirade of Castania in prison (" Carde of 
Fancie," IV. 171), is reminiscent of Leucippe's 
tirade against Thersander (A. T., VI. xxii), 
though far inferior. The double wedding at the 
end of " Carde of Fancie " — a brother and a sister 
marrying respectively a sister and a brother — 
looks like an intensified repetition of Achilles 
Tatius's double wedding — of Clitophon to Leu- 
cippe and of his sister Calligone to Callistratus. 

In "Morando" (III), 76, — (another member 
of the same group of books) — " Being all pleas- 
antlie disposed, they passed away to supper with 
manye pretie parlees, Don Silvestro only ex- 
cepted, who was in his dumps : for the beautie of 
Lacena had alreadie so battered the bulwarke of 
his breast, and had so quatted his stomacke with 
her excellent qualities, that he onely fed his eyes 
in noting the exquisit perfection of her person" 
— a reminiscence of A. T., I. v, and V. xiii. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 4°5 

Immediately after the 1584-7 g rou P there fol ~ 
low " Pandosto " (published 1588) and " Alcida " 
(licensed December 9, 1588). Each contains a 
momentary reminiscence of " Clitophon and Leu- 
cippe." In "Alcida" (IX), 83, Meribates, " early 
in a morning stepped into her [Eriphila's] bed 
chamber, where finding her betweene halfe sleep- 
ing and waking " he said, " Sweet mistresse^ I 
feele in my mind, a perilous and mortall conflict 
between feare and love." (Cf. Clitophon's con- 
flicting emotions in Leucippe's chamber, A. T., 
II. xxiii.) 

In " Pandosto," IV. 310, 311, 314, Fawnia is 
wooed by Pandosto with threats and verbal abuse 
which distinctly recall Thersander's brutal court- 
ship of Leucippe (A. T., xix-xx; VII. i). 

"Philomela," published only in the year of 
Greene's death (1592), was " written long since," 
as he says in his Epistle Dedicatory (p. 109) ; and 
" hatched long agoe, though now brought forth to 
light" ("To the Gentlemen Readers," p. 113). 
Indeed, it belongs not to the late realistic group 
with which it appears, but rather, in kind, to the 
1584-7 group, or to the " Pandosto "-" Mena- 
phon" group of 1588-9. 

Philomela's commitment of herself to a ship 
whose destination she does not know or care to 
know has already (ante, p. 389) been compared 
with the similar embarkation of Clitophon and 
Leucippe. The denouement of " Philomela " in a 
final trial-scene is obviously modelled upon the 
corresponding scene in Achilles Tatius. In " Phi- 
lomela" (XI), 199-203, Philippo, weary of living 



406 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

because repentant of his cruelty to his wife 
Philomela, accuses himself of a murder that he 
may gain the boon of death. The person sup- 
posed to have been murdered is all the while alive 
and well, and appears in court in time to save 
him. There are other particulars of this scene 
which point to Sidney's "Arcadia" as an addi- 
tional model, but so much is equally attributable 
to the bizarre situation at Clitophon's trial (A. T., 
VII. vi-xiii; VIII. ix) ; where Clitophon to gain 
the boon of death accuses himself of the murder 
of Leucippe, who is all the while alive and well, 
and who actually appears at the second session of 
the court. 

Last of these miscellaneous borrowings from 
Achilles Tatius is a scene in Greene's " Groats- 
worth" (XII), 1 19-126. Roberto has introduced 
his brother Lucanio to the courtesan Lamilia, with 
whom he has arranged to fleece the victim and 
share the spoil. Finding them amorous, he re- 
marks that " some crosse chaunce may come. . . . 
And for a warning to teach you both wit, He tell 
you an old wiues tale. Before ye go on with 
your tale (quoth Mistresse Lamilia) let me give 
ye a caueat by the way, which shall be figured in 
a Fable." She tells the Fable of the Fox, the 
Badger and the Ewe, — showing that she distrusts 
Roberto. He then tells the Novella of the Farmer 
Bridegroom, as if to show-" the effects of sodaine 
love," but really to hint that there's many a slip 
'twixt the cup and the lip, and that she had better 
play fair by him, or he'll spoil the game. This 
reciprocal telling of tales to convey a covert warn- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 407 

ing probably was suggested by the scene (A. T., 
II. xx-xxii) where Conops and Satyrus exchange 
fables with like purpose. 

Such is the influence of Achilles Tatius upon 
Greene. In only a single case— "Arbasto," where 
it gives him his narrative framework, faults and 
all, does it even approach the creative imagina- 
tion at work. Everywhere else it gives either 
single scenes, which Greene rather copies than 
imitates, or, still more superficially, ornament that 
is non-structural, that is easily detachable, and 
that again is not so much inspired by Achilles 
Tatius as transcribed from him. All this is quite 
consonant with the superficiality both of Greene 
and of Achilles Tatius. Greene, if anything, is 
the shallower of the two. He is blind where 
Achilles Tatius has a seeing eye ; he can draw no 
character, whereas Achilles Tatius finds some 
characters within his range ; he cannot sustain a 
plot beyond novella-length, whereas Achilles 
Tatius keeps up both interest and coherence 
throughout his eight books; he is the slave of 
Fortune, Achilles Tatius only her worshiper. On 
the other hand, where Achilles Tatius is gross, 
Greene is unstained ; where Achilles Tatius wan- 
ders, Greene clings to the tale because he will tell 
what happened ; and where Achilles Tatius's lust 
of the eye lures him aside, Greene's innocent 
blindness keeps him in the path. But their love 
of clap-trap and tinsel, their essential superficial- 
ity, makes them kin. Given Greene and Achilles 
Tatius in contact at all, Greene is sure to take 
from his predecessor much the sort of thing we 



408 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

have found him actually taking. Precisely so far 
as Greene's work belongs to the literature of illu- 
sion, it is fed by the work of Achilles Tatius. 



Not so with Heliodorus. Greene's contact 
with the "yEthiopica " is a contact on Greene's 
best side, the side that at least endeavors to be 
real ; the side that at least endeavors to draw 
character, to construct plot, to depict monumental 
background. Greene's predilection for a suffer- 
ing heroine produces if not a character, at least 
a type; his employment of oracles and recogni- 
tion goes, in intention at least, to the foundation 
of his plot ; and his striving for " pathetic " 
ensemble-scenes is itself pathetic. What matter 
that he fails, sometimes absurdly, in each of these 
endeavors? Like his model, Heliodorus, magnis 
excidit ausis. And it was the happy destiny of 
one of Greene's Heliodorean plots, adorned with 
pastoral detail from Longus, to be caught up by 
Shakespeare, and translated. 

Greene three times alludes by name to Thea- 
genes and Chariclea. In " Mamillia " (II. 67), 
Mamillia acknowledges her love to Pharicles : 
"be thou but Theagines [sic], and I will try my 
selfe to be more constant then Caniclia [sic] : no 
torments, no trauayle, no, onelye the losse of life 
shall diminishe my love." Pharicles later, in love 
with Publia, reproaches himself for his incon- 
stancy. After citing Regulus and others who kept 
faith, he concludes (ib. } 91) : " What perilles suf- 
fered Theagines to keepe his credit with Caricha 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 409 

[sic] ? Pharicles, let these examples mooue thee 
to be loyall to Mamillia." In " Alcida " (IX), 80, 
Eriphila, like Pharicles, reproves her own incon- 
stancy, and in almost the same words. She cites 
two of the same antique examples, modifying 
them so as to make the woman the pattern of 
fidelity, and concludes : " What perils suffered 
Cariclia for Theagynes?" — Greene also mentions 
the Gymnosophists : "Mamillia" (II), 164, 278, 
"Morando" (III), 118. 

The assertion that future evils, though not pre- 
ventable, are mitigated when foreseen by means 
of astrology, occurs in Heliodorus (II. xxiv),and 
is imitated by Achilles Tatius (I. iii). Greene's 
repetition of it resembles rather the former pas- 
sage. " Planetomachia " (V), 25-6: "This sci- 
ence ('astronomie' = astrology) is very profi- 
table to them that use it well. For whereas by a 
perfect calculation prosperitie and fortunate suc- 
cesse is prognosticated unto us, they breede in us 
a delightfull hope that they shall ensue: but when 
any sinister mishappes are foreshadowed and 
foreseene, then they are less greeuous, because 
they are zvarely lookt for, and so by time the 
burden of such insuing daungers, by a prouident 
foresight is somewhat mittigated." 

Like Heliodorus's, too, are some of Greene's 
uses of Fortune. As regards her function of 
bringing about shipwreck, it would be risky to 
assert in general that one of the Greek Romances 
was Greene's source, to the exclusion of the 
other. But in "Arbasto" (III), 178 ff., it has 
been seen {ante, p. 393), the association of 



4IO THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

the shipwreck with Sidon, Astarte, etc., stamps 
it definitely as coming from Achilles Tatius. In 
the same way, in " Pandosto " (IV) the associa- 
tion of the two shipwrecks with the oracle, and 
with the exposure and the restoration of a child, 
stamps them as part of a more fundamental and 
grandiose plan of the Heliodorean kind, wherein 
Fortune serves as an instrument to work out 
higher ends. In "Menaphon" (VI), 42, likewise, 
the shipwreck follows closely upon the oracle, and 
the denouement again consists of recognition, re- 
union and restoration, with very specific resem- 
blances to the denouement of the "^Ethiopica " 
(see post, pp. 426-8). But the influence of 
Sidney's " Arcadia " upon " Menaphon " is as un- 
mistakable as that of the '^thiopica " ; and 
with regard to elements common both to Sidney 
and to Heliodorus, like the oracle and the ship- 
wreck, it would be difficult to say which influence 
preponderates. 

Beyond doubt, however, is the source of 
Greene's habit of speaking of Fortune as a maker 
of theatrical situations, comic or tragic. Mariana, 
cast away, and by shipwreck bereft of husband 
and children, whom she believes to have perished, 
exclaims ("Perimedes" (VII), 26): " Dispaire 
and die, so shalt thou glut the rutheless destinies 
with a most balefull stratageme; since thy hus- 
band, thy children, have bene the first actors, end 
thou desperatly such a dole full tragedie: let for- 
tune see how thou scornest to be infortunate." — 
A speech not in Boccaccio. 

And at the end of the Second Tale, ib. t 51, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 411 

" Fortune willing after so sharpe a Catastrophe, 
to induce a comicall conclusion," reunited Alci- 
medes and Constance. In "Pandosto" (IV), 
258-262, the sudden death of Garinter, the heir 
to the Kingdom, and of his mother the Queen, 
together with the King's desperation at the news, 
is spoken of as a " tragicall discourse of fortune." 
In "Philomela" (XI), 155, "Fortune whose 
enuye is to subuert content, and whose delight is 
to turn comicke mirth into tragicke sorrowes, 
entered into the Theater of Philomelas lyfe, and 
beganne to act a baleful seane . . ." 41 

The predilection for female character has often 
been remarked as characteristic of Greene. To 
say that he derived it from Heliodorus would of 
course be "to reason too curiously"; but it is 
worth noting again as one of the traits that at 
least lay Greene open to the influence of Greek 
Romance: — like his predilection for pastoral, or 
his " tychomania." And in more than one re- 
spect its results coincide with those of the same 
predilection in Heliodorus. Most of Greene's fe- 
male characters suffer and are true; his conven- 
tional misogynistic passages, and his few sketches 
of wicked women, are far outweighed by his 
stories of women's chastity, fidelity and forti- 
tude. 42 Incidentally, also, some of these excellent 

41 Similar passages : " Perimedes " (VII), 47 ; " Pandosto " 
(IV), 317; "Carde of Fancie " (IV), 192; "Never too 
Late" (VIII), 60-61. 

43 " Mamillia " is avowedly a defence of women against 
their maligners, and is expressly philogynistic : (II), 106-7, 
162-3, 173, 260-1. Its plot rests upon the fidelity of 
Mamillia and Publia, and the treachery of Pharicles, who 
is a "mutable Machauilian " (205). The appended Anato- 



412 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

ladies, in learning to outwit Fortune by squirm- 
ing, acquire a skill in dissimulation 43 that would 
do credit to Chariclea. And on the other side, 
Greene's wicked types include not only the court- 
esan, 44 but also the amorous woman, 45 the De- 
maeneta and Arsace of the "^Ethiopica." The 
policy of dissimulation, too, extends to Greene's 
men ; 46 the " Machiavellianism " of the Renais- 
sance here coinciding with the Greek Romance 
hero's reliance upon his nimble wits. These types 
are scarcely worth dwelling upon, for they are 
types and nothing more; still they are much the 

mie of Louers Flatteries, in a letter from Mamillia to 
Modesta, offers (254) a counterblast to each of Ovid's 
attacks upon women. To the De Arte Amandi, which 
teaches men how to inveigle women, Greene opposes (255- 
264) directions how to resist " the fained assault of mens 
pretended flatterie " ; to the De Remedio Amoris, which 
(254) teaches men " to restraine their affections from plac- 
ing their fancies but for a time," Greene opposes his 
remedy (264-6) for ladies in love. But all this does not 
preclude (54, 221-2) the usual witticisms ae conjuge non 
ducenda, and concerning women's fickleness. — Other suffer- 
ing heroines: Myrania ("Arbasto"), Castania (" Carde of 
Fancie"), Bellaria and Fawnia (" Pandosto "), Pasylla 
(" Planetomachia "), Barmenissa - ("Penelopes Web"), 
Sephestia (" Menaphpn "), Mariana and Constance (" Peri- 
medes"), Isabel ("Never- too Late" and " Francescos 
Fortunes"), Maesia and Semiramis ("Farewell to Follie"), 
Philomela ("Philomela"), Theodora ("Vision"), Argen- 
tina (" Orpharion "). 

43 Pasylla, in "Planetomachia" (V), 78; Sephestia, in 
"Menaphon" (VI), 52, 63. 

"Clarinda ("Mamillia"), Olinda ("Penelopes Web"), 
Infida ("Never too Late" and "Francescos Fortunes"), 
not named in " Mourning Garment," Lamilia (" Groats- 
worth "). 

"Rhodope ("Planetomachia"), Maedyna ("Censure"). 

"Pharicles ("Mamillia"), Arbasto ("Arbasto"), Pan- 
dosto (" Pandosto •"). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 413 

same types that Fortune evolves in Greek Ro- 
mance. 

Greene's strength lies, however, not in charac- 
ter but in incident. Greene borrows many inci- 
dental situations, motifs, tags, and bits of orna- 
ment from Heliodorus. Among such minor, non- 
structural, borrowings, is what Brunhuber (p. 
22) calls " das Eros Motiv" : a youth or maiden, 
once an enemy to love and a contemner of the 
cult, rites, or deity of Venus or Cupid, falls a 
victim to the vengeance of the gods of love, and 
becomes love's slave. So it was with Chariclea 
before she met Theagenes; so (in imitation of 
Heliodorus) with Clitophon before he met Leu- 
cippe; so with Euthynicus and the nymph Rho- 
dopis, whose metamorphosis is related as an epi- 
sode by Achilles Tatius (VIII. xii). This theme 
goes back to the story of Hippolytus, or further, 
is a favorite motif of the Alexandrians and their 
imitators, is found in Ovid and Virgil, and revives 
in the Renaissance, e. g., in Poliziano's. "La 
Giostra" (I. st. 12-44). Sidney, as has been 
seen {ante, p. 308), uses it (and uses it structur- 
ally) as the motive force of his episode of An- 
tiphilus and Erona. In view of these other pos- 
sible sources, an unqualified assertion that Greene 
took his " Eros Motiv " from Heliodorus would 
not be justified. The present merely seems a con- 
venient place at which to mention this borrowing. 
Greene uses it, as has been said, not structurally, 
but ornamentally. So in " Alcida" (IX), 90-91, 
" Venus seeing how my daughter Marpesia lived 
carelesse of her loves, and never sent so much as 



414 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

one sigh to Paphos for a sacrifice: shee called 
Cupid, complaining that shee was atheist to her 
deitie, and one opposed to her principles : where- 
upon the boy at his mothers becke drewe out an 
invenomed arrow, and levelling at Marpesia, hit 
her under the right pappe." Now the point of 
the story of Marpesia is not her disdainfulness, 
but her inability to keep a secret; so that the 
Eros-motif really has nothing to do with the 
story. It is used similarly, to adorn a lover's 
soliloquy or as an ornate fashion of saying that 
someone fell in love, in " Carde of Fancie " (IV), 
66; "Pandosto" (IV), 275; " Planetomachia " 
(V), 57~59> I2 9; "Perimedes" (VII), 69-71 
(repetition of first passage in "Planetomachia") ; 
"Menaphon" (VI), 37-42, 49, 55; " Tullies 
Love" (VII), 106, 109. 

More certainly borrowed from Heliodorus are 
the incidents following. In "Philomela" (XI), 
173, the captain of the ship in which the heroine 
makes her voyage to Sicily falls in love with her, 
and determines that she shall be his, will she nill 
she. Just so does the Phoenician captain fall in 
love with his fair passenger Chariclea ("/Ethio- 
pica"). The captain of Philomela's ship, pur- 
suant to his resolution, steps to the door of her 
cabin, and overhears her soliloquizing within, 
and calling herself by the assumed name Ab- 
stemia. ("Philomela," 174-5). This parallels 
the situation in the "vEthiopica" (V. ii) where 
Cnemon at Chariclea's door overhears her solilo- 
quizing within and calling herself by the assumed 
name Thisbe. Achilles Tatius also imitated this 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 415 

passage (A. T., VI. xvi), letting Thersander 
overhear Leucippe call herself Lacaena. The re- 
mainder of the incident in " Philomela " Greene 
takes from Sidney's "Arcadia" (III. vi, 264- 
264V), where Cecropia at Pamela's door over- 
hears her prayer and vow of chastity, and is 
abashed. So the Captain at Philomela's door 
overhears her vow of chastity, is abashed, and 
resolves to treat her with reverence. In " Mena- 
phon " ( VI ) , 62, Sephestia ( Samela) , banished by 
her father the King of Arcadia, but shipwrecked 
upon the Arcadian coast, exclaims : " My natiue 
home is my worst nurserie, and my friends denie 
that which strangers . . . grant" — viz., hospi- 
tality. Both the situation and the antithetic 
phrasing are similar to those in "yEthiopica," X. 
xvi, where Hydaspes exclaims (U 272-3) : "My 
daughter . . . which hast in an ill time hapned 
upon thine owne countrey, worse to thee then 
any strange lande, who hast bene safe in other 
countreyes, but art in danger of death in thine 
owne . . . ." In " Planetomachia " (V), 129, 
Rhodope, wife of Psammetichus, King of Mem- 
phis, falls in love with her stepson Philarkes, and 
shows him favor. Now Aeliah tells ("Var. 
Hist.," XIII. 33) only the story of Psamme- 
tichus's infatuation with the beauty of Rhodopis's 
sandal, which an eagle had snatched up and drop- 
ped in his lap, and of their subsequent marriage : 
he says nothing about a stepson. 47 Greene tells 
the earlier part of the story — the part about the 

4T Neither does Herodotus (II. 134, 135) or Pliny 
(XXXVI. 17). (Herodotus, like Heliodorus, says that Rho- 
dopis was a Thracian.) 



41 6 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

eagle, the sandal, and the marriage; and then 
proceeds to invent Philarkes and the guilty pas- 
sion of his stepmother. Not quite invent, either, 
for in the "^Ethiopica " he finds a Rhodopis at 
Memphis tempting Calasiris (II. xxv) ; again at 
Memphis he finds Arsace tempting Theagenes 
(VII. xiiifl) ; and he finds the guilty passion of 
Demaeneta for her stepson Cnemon 48 (I. ix-xii, 
xiv-xvii). These he compounds, either inde- 
pendently, or, as is more probable, under the 
additional influence of Sidney's story (" Old 
Arcadia," Clifford MS., y6v.) of Amasis and his 
stepmother, — a tale oddly enough also located at 
Memphis. 49 (See ante, p. 348, and post, Ap. B, 
p. 473-5.) The origin of the whole series is of 
course the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus; 
while one of the scenes in Greene's treatment of 
it — the visit of Rhodope to Philarkes where he 
lies lovesick — is probably from the quasi-his- 
torical legend of Stratonice and Antiochus. Last 
among these minor borrowings of Greene from 
Heliodorus may be noted the situation, in " Carde 
of Fancie" (IV), 191, where Gwydonius, in com- 

43 It is rather a temptation to think that Greene's novella 
of the Farmer Bridegroom — " Groatsworth " (XII), 121-6 — 
with its double deception, double rendezvous, qui pro quo 
in the dark, and discovery, may owe something to Helio- 
dorus's novella of the intrigues of Cnemon, Thisbe, and 
Demaeneta — "^thiopica," I. ix-xii, xiv-xvii ; but the abun- 
dance of similar material in fabliaux and Italian novelle 
would render any assertion of influence here extremely 
hazardous. 

49 Rhodope or Rhodopis is alluded to in " Euphues," II. 
166-7, and in Greene as follows: " Mamillia " (II), 200, 
230, 280; "Carde of Fancie" (IV), 62; "Debate" (IV), 
219; " Planetomachia " (V), 104 ff; "Penelopes Web" 
(V), 175 (which also mentions Philarkes). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 417 

bat with his father Clerophontes, "alwaies re- 
ceived the strokes, but never so much as re- 
turned one blow: till at last looking aloft, and 
spying Castania [his mistress], his courage in- 
creased, that, all feare set aside, he carelessly 
flung away his sword and shield and ranne upon 
his Father," made him yield, and was proclaimed 
the victor. It is scarcely to be doubted that 
Greene had in mind the moment ("^Eth.," IV. 
iv) when Theagenes, fixing his eyes upon Chari- 
clea, wins the race. 

This same scene, — the denouement of " Carde 
of Fancie " — may be considered, too, as the first 
of Greene's major borrowings from Heliodorus, 
— borrowings of more than single situations, 
phrases or incidents, borrowings that are not 
merely ornamental, but structural. Here we 
have in fact, Greene's earliest attempt to write 
an ensemble-scene in Heliodorus's manner. As 
has been remarked, the scene is structural, in that 
it forms the denouement; there is a trial by battle ; 
this offers a spectacle for a numerous assemblage, 
whose life and death depend upon the issue of the 
combat, and who show appropriate pathos (pp. 
189-90: " . . . all the Lords of Alexandria, clad 
in mourning attire . . . , thinking this dismall day 
should be the date of their destruction " ; while, 
upon Gwydonius's victory — p. 191, "they of 
Alexandria gaue a mightie shout") ; here are the 
hero and the heroine ; here is the spectacular mo- 
ment when he, looking up, sees her, gains re- 
newed courage, and in her sight wins victory; 
here, finally is the hero's theatrical disclosure of 
28 



418 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

his identity, and recognition by his father, so that 
(p. 192) " Fernandas and Orlanio stoode aston- 
ished at this strange tragedie." Though ill- 
written, this passage contains nearly every in- 
gredient of the great scenes of the "iEthiopica," 
and gives token of the deepening of Heliodorus's 
influence upon Greene. 

Structural too are the ensemble scenes in 
"Tullies Love" and in "Philomela." At the 
Senate House (VII. 212-13), " before the whole 
state of Rome," there is held a trial of the dis- 
pute between Cicero and Lentulus on the one 
side and Fabius on the other. Cicero delivers an 
oration ; the bystanders are duly moved ; and the 
scene brings the story to its end. In " Philo- 
mela" (XI), 167, the heroine's jealous husband, 
Philippo, publicly accuses her and his friend 
Lutesio of unchastity. He makes his speech be- 
fore the Duke, Councillors and people of Venice. 
"And heer Philippo ceased, driuing al the hearers 
into a great mase, that the Duke sate astonished, 
the Consigliadori musing, and the common people 
murmuring . . . and bending their enuious eyes 
against the two innocents"; who, after sentence 
has been pronounced against them, make 
speeches. Later, Philomela's father, the Duke 
of Milan, comes to Venice to avenge the injury 
done to his daughter. He has received from one 
of the two Genoese who swore against her a 
confession that their testimony was false. There 
is a second trial-scene. Philippo, summoned to 
the Senate House, brings with him the other 
perjured Genoese, who likewise confesses ; where- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 419 

upon {ib., 189) "there was a great shout in the 
Senat house, and clapping of hands amongest the 
common people." Philippo is overcome with re- 
morse, and acknowledges his sin. Finally, there 
is still a third trial scene, now in Palermo, which 
brings about the denouement (ib., 203). Both 
Philippo and Philomela having accused them- 
selves of the murder of the Duke's son, the young 
man appears alive. "At this the Duke start 
uppe, and all the standers by were in a mase." 
And when it further appeared that Philomela had 
accused herself in order to save her husband, 
"the Sicilians at this, looking Philomela in the 
face, shouted at her wondrous vertues, and 
Philippo in a sound betweene greefe and ioy was 
carried away halfe dead." Pathos, evidently, and 
" pathetic optics," 50 exhibited in a structural en- 
semble-scene. 

80 Almost overdone is the " pathetic optics " of the scene 
in "Menaphon" (VI), 71-3, where Melicertus and Samela 
meet at the shepherds' feast. When she entered, "her 
eyes gaue such a shine, and her face such a brightnesse, 
that they stood gazing on this Goddesse." She blushed so 
that the girls themselves loved her. Doron jogged Meli- 
certus (Maximus disguised) who "was deeply drowned 
in the contemplation of her excellencie ; sending out vol- 
lies of sighs in remembrance of his old loue, as thus he 
sate meditating of her favour, how much she resembled 
her that death had deprived him off . . . Menaphon seeing 
Samela thus honoured, concerned no small content ... in- 
somuch that euerie one perceived howe the poore swayne 
fedde vpon the dignities of his Mistres graces. • Pesana 
[in love with M.] noting this, began to lowre, and Carmela 
[M.'s sister] winking upon her fellowes, answered her 
frownes with a smile, which doubled her griefe. . . . Whiles 
thus there was banding of such lookes, as euerie one im- 
ported as much as an impreso, Samela, willing to see the 
fashion of these countrey yong f rowes, cast her eyes abroad, 
and in viewing euerie face, at last her eyes glanced on the 



420 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

The vindication of chastity by public trial oc- 
curs four times 60a in Greene's works. Twice it 
is based wholly upon the story of Susanna: 
"Myrrour of Modestie" (III) and " Francescos 
Fortunes" (VIII). In " Philomela," as just set 
forth, Greene retains from the story of Susanna 
the false witnesses, but adds the eloquentia and 
pathos of Greek Romance. At its fourth occur- 
rence — in "Pandosto" (IV), 258-262, — Greene 
has wholly discarded the scriptural — or apocry- 
phal — tradition, and has enriched his theme, itself 
Heliodorean, with several elements from Helio- 
dorus besides the eloquentia and pathos already 
mentioned. In fact, the trial scene in " Pan- 
dosto" is Greene's most ambitious effort in this 
kind. Pandosto having accused his Queen, Bel- 
laria, of unchastity, has sent to consult Apollo's 
oracle upon the question. The embassy returns 
from Delphi with the answer, sealed. It is to be 
opened in the hall of judgment, in the presence 

lookes of Melicertus ; whose countenance resembled so vnto 
her dead Lord, that as a woman astonied she stood staring 
on his face ; but ashamed to gaze vpon a stranger she 
made restraint of her looks, and so taking her eye from 
one particular object, she sent it abroad to make general 
survey of their countrey demanours. But amidst all this 
gazing, he that had seene poore Menaphon, how, infected 
with a iealous furie, he stared each man in the face, fear- 
ing their eyes should feed or surfet on his Mistres beautie : 
if they glaunst he thought straight they would be riualls 
. . . ; if they flatlie lookt, then there were deeply snared ; 
if they once smiled on her, they had receyued some glance 
from Samela that made them so malepart ; if she laught, 
she likte ; and at that he began to frowne : thus sate poore 
Menaphon, all dinner while, pained with a thousand iealous 
passions, keeping . . . his eyes watchmen of his loues." 

Ma Five times, if the denouement of " Menaphon " be 
counted. (See post, pp. 426-428.) 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 42 1 

of the nobles and commons, before the accusing 
King and the persecuted Queen, who is to be 
acquitted or convicted as publicly as she has been 
accused. The oracle is read; the Queen is 
cleared; "the commons gaue a great showt, re- 
ioysing and clapping their hands " ; and the King 
confesses, repents, and promises amendment. 
But at this moment, word is brought of the sud- 
den death of his son Garinter ; " which newes so 
soone as Bellaria heard, surcharged before with 
extreame ioy, and now suppressed with heauy 
sorrowe, her vitall spirites were so stopped, that 
she fell downe presently dead"; "this sodaine 
sight so appalled the King's sences, that he sanck 
from his seate in a soud," was carried away, and 
(p. 262) remained three days speechless. "His 
commons were as men in dispaire, so diuersly dis- 
tressed: there was nothing but mourning and 
lamentation to be heard throughout al Bohemia : 
. . . this tragicall discourse of fortune so daunted 
them, as they went like shadows, not men." 

Greene, lacking the grandiose descriptive power 
of Heliodorus, the sense of monumental back- 
ground and spectacle, has yet, within his limita- 
tions, done his best to make a Heliodorean scene. 
Here we have, as the actuating cause of the as- 
semblage, an oracle, and this is twice (at Delphos 
and again when the scroll is handed to the King) 
kept from the knowledge of the personages of 
the story, so that for them there is an accumu- 
lation of suspense, which increases their subse- 
quent pathos. The estates of the realm then 
solemnly meet in a great ensemble scene in the 



422 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Hall of Justice: there is a trial, and, at that, a 
trial of chastity. This the oracle vindicates hier- 
atically. The assemblage exhibits the appropriate 
pathos. At this happy moment, affairs take a 
sudden turn for the worse: Garinter dies, the 
Queen dies, the King is stricken. Again there is 
appropriate pathos on the part of the spectators 
and hearers. They and the author call the series 
of events a " tragicall discourse," and attribute it 
to Fortune. Finally, the scene marks the trans- 
ition from the first part of the story, which deals 
with the fortunes of the older generation, to the 
second part, which deals with the fortunes of the 
younger. In its relation to the structure of the 
whole, then, as well as in its internal elements, it 
is strongly reminiscent of the ensemble passages 
of Heliodorus, most of which are likewise transi- 
tional ; but especially reminiscent of his denoue- 
ment, where Chariclea's chastity is vindicated, 
and the Delphic oracle fulfilled, in a similar scene 
of spectacular publicity, pathos, and solemnity, 
with similar use of theatrical terminology, and 
similar attribution to Fortune. 

It is the use of the Oracle, instead of the con- 
fession of perjured witnesses to vindicate the 
heroine's chastity, that chiefly distinguishes the 
trial scene in " Pandosto " from that in " Philo- 
mela." Greene's employment of the oracle, here 
and in " Menaphon," is worth dwelling on. In 
" Pandosto," from the point of view of the con- 
scious imitator of Heliodorus, the oracle serves 
in general to bring about an ensemble-scene and 
to furnish the characteristic hieratic element. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 423 

Specifically, in the economy of the tale, it serves 
both to vindicate the Queen's chastity, and, like 
the oracle in " iEthiopica," II. xxxv, to promote 
the restoration of an exposed child ; for, it says : 
" the King shall live without an heire, if that which 
is lost be not founde." It is couched in plain 
straightforward language; it is free from para- 
dox ; is eminently structural ; and, again like 
Heliodorus's oracle, it fulfils itself by devious 
ways — the devious ways of Fortune under the 
control of the gods. Not so the oracle in " Mena- 
phon." That is merely a verbal riddle, and 
serves only to keep the plot entangled and re- 
tarded. Arcadia being afflicted with a pestilence, 
King Democles sent to " Delphos " to get Apollo's 
oracle, which (XI) 34 came couched in para- 
doxical terms : 

". . . Dead men shall warre, and unborne babes 

shall frowne, 

And with their fawchens hew their foemen downe. 

When Lambes have Lions for their surest guide, 

. . . When swelling seas have neither ebbe nor tide, 

. . . Then looke Arcadians for a happie time." 

This turns out to mean that Maximius, sup- 
posed to be dead, shall be found alive and fight- 
ing; that Pleusidippus his son, yet unborn, shall 
also fight; that the King and his daughter Se- 
phestia shall masquerade as shepherds, and thus 
provide lions, viz., royalty, as guides for lambs; 
and that upon the coat of arms of Maximius and 
Pleusidippus shall appear a swelling sea, — which, 
being painted, has neither ebb nor tide! Of 



424 TJIE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

course, the attempt was to imitate the paradoxical 
oracles in the "^Ethiopica " and in Sidney's 
"Arcadia," but Greene has succeeded in produc- 
ing only a quibble. 

This absurdity Greene would fain make struc- 
tural, by making Samela (Sephestia) set its ful- 
filment as the condition upon which she will 
wed Melicertus (Maximius — already her hus- 
band, but unrecognized). She (p. 114) "vowed 
marriage to him solemnly in presence of all the 
shepheards, but not to be solemnized till the 
Prophecie was fulfilled, mentioned in the begin- 
ning of this Historic" Again the object of 
imitation is in the "^Lthiopica" — this time 
Chariclea's promise to marry Theagenes only 
after their restoration to Ethiopia in fulfilment 
of the oracle. But the condition set by Chariclea 
is reasonable, for to her the fulfilment of the 
oracle means, as she is perfectly aware, restora- 
tion to her parents and her country; while the 
similar condition set by Samela is quite without 
reason or motive. The oracle does not, as far 
as anyone has up to that point been informed, 
concern her at all: she has not been connected 
with it, nor can she know, as Chariclea knows, 
that its fulfilment will restore her to her father 
and her rank. Whereas in "Pandosto" the 
oracle brings about a real peripeteia, in " Mena- 
phon" it is only pseudo-structural. Without it, 
the story would have begun, moved on, and 
ended, exactly as it now does. 

The King's jealousy is the genuine "moving 
force " in " Pandosto." From it the remainder 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 425 

of the story grows: the retreat of the King's 
friend, the persecution of the Queen, and the 
exposure of her daughter, with all its conse- 
quences. And here again a structural element is 
borrowed, with very slight change, from the 
"^Ethiopica." It is to forestall the King's prob- 
able suspicion about the parentage of Chariclea 
that the Queen exposes her ("TEth." II. xxxi; 
IV. viii). In "Pandosto" the King's actual 
suspicion of Fawnia's parentage occasions her 
exposure. (IV) 252: Pandosto " found out this 
devise, that seeing (as he thought) it came by 
fortune, so he would commit it to the charge of 
fortune " ; and Bellaria, hearing of his resolve, 
cries: "Alas sweete infortunate babe, scarce 
borne, before envied by fortune, would the day 
of thy birth had beene the terme of thy life . . . 
(ib., 253) and shalt thou, sweete Babe, be com- 
mitted to Fortune, when thou art already spited 
by Fortune? . . . Let me put this chayne about 
thy little necke, that if fortune save thee, it may 
help to succour thee." The child's exposure be- 
cause of her father's jealousy, the commitment 
of her to Fortune, the addition of tokens which 
the mother hopes may be of use to identify the 
child if found, the agonized speech by the mother 
when her child is exposed, — all these, even to 
verbal similarities, are parallel in Heliodorus and 
in Greene. 

The exposure in " Pandosto " has its counter- 
part in " Menaphon," — structural to be sure, but 
quite unmotived — in the King's exposure of his 
daughter, with her husband, her infant son, and 



426 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

her uncle, in an open boat. This act is the 
" motive force " ; yet we never learn the King's 
reason for it. Towards the end of " Menaphon " 
(VI), 142 — however, we do find a borrowing 
from Heliodorus that is both structural and mo- 
tived. King Democles, in love with Samela, 
orders that she and her favored lover Melicertus 
be imprisoned together alone. The situation is 
exactly analogous to that in the "yEthiopica " 
(VIII. x), where Queen Arsace, in love with 
Theagenes, orders that he and his beloved Chari- 
clea be imprisoned together alone. Greene in this 
case has improved upon his original. Heliodorus 
assigns as Arsace's motive the desire to torture 
the lovers by affording to each the sight of the 
other's captivity : — a motive that no one with any 
knowledge of human nature could possibly enter- 
tain ; for of course the joy of the lovers at seeing 
each other far exceeds their grief at seeing each 
other in prison. Greene supplies Democles with 
a much more plausible motive. Finding it im- 
possible to gain Samela's favor, the King re- 
solves that she shall die, and this under a con- 
viction of unchastity. His confederate the jailer 
is to bring the charge, to which the lovers' im- 
prisonment together gives color. 

The "moment of last suspense" is the same 
in the "yEthiopica" (X. vii ff.), in "Menaphon" 
(VI), 142-3, and in "Pandosto" (IV), 314-15: 
A princess once exposed is restored to her father 
the King, who, not recognizing her as his daugh- 
ter, orders her to be put to death. 51 The 

81 Greene in both " Pandosto " and " Menaphon " attrib- 
utes to the King a motive not in Greek romance : Not rec- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



427 



denouement . too is parallel, even to verbal simi- 
larities, 52 in the "JEthiopica" and in "Mena- 
phon." This will readily appear from the follow- 
ing comparison; in which the "moment of last 
suspense " is prefixed, for the sake of continuity : 



"Menaphon" (VI) 

142-3. Sephestia, 
daughter of King Demo- 
cles of Arcadia, having 
been exposed, is now re- 
stored, with her husband 
Maximius, to her father. 
She knows him, but he 
does not know her, and 
is about to have her and 
her husband put to death. 
Her son, though he does 
not know Sephestia to 
be his mother, remon- 
strates with the King 
on account of her beau- 
ty, but in vain. Further- 
more, Maximius and Se- 
phestia decline to save 
themselves by proving 
their identity and their 
marriage. The discovery 
is effected, at last, by 
the appearance of "an 
olde woman attired like 
a Prophetesse," who dis- 

ognizing his daughter, the King falls in love with her, but 
finding her resolved not to yield, would punish her with 
death. 

53 For which Greene's source was, apparently, Under- 
downe's translation. 



" ^Ethiopica " X 

vii. Chariclea, daughter 
of King Hydaspes of 
Ethiopia, having been 
exposed, is now restored, 
with her husband Thea- 
genes, to her father. She 
knows him, but he does 
not know her, and is 
about to have her and 
her husband put to death. 
Her mother, though she 
does not know Chariclea 
to be her daughter, re- 
monstrates with the King 
on account of her beau- 
ty, but in vain. Further- 
more, Theagenes and 
Chariclea decline to save 
themselves by proving 
their identity and their 
marriage. The discovery 
is effected, at last, by the 
appearance of two old 
priests — one a priest of 
the prophetic god, — who 



428 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

closes the truth. The between them disclose 

happy ending is the ful- the truth. The happy 

filment of a Delphic ending is the fulfilment 

oracle. of a Delphic oracle. 

143. Pleusidippus U 263. " Persina . . . 

"turned to the King, and said: O husband, what 

sayd: Is it not pitie, a maide have you ap- 

Democles, such diuine pointed to be sacrificed? 

beauty should be wrapt I knowe not whether 

in cinders? ... all the ever I saw so faire a 

assistants grieved to see creature . . . What a 

so faire a creature sub- beautifull visage hath 

ject to the violent rage shee? with how couragi- 

of fortune." ous a heart beareth shee 

this fortune?" 

In " Menaphon " as in the " ^Ethiopica," both 
the concealment of identity and its hieratic dis- 
closure are the more striking in that they are 
quite without motive. Maximius and Sephestia 
have not the slightest reason for not revealing 
who they are ; and as for the old prophetess, she 
is simply dragged in: she has never been heard 
of before, and vanishes as soon as she has said 
her say. In both respects, at the expense of 
probability in his motivation and of structural 
coherence in his plot, Greene has made a mani- 
fest effort to parallel quite closely the ending of 
the " yEthiopica." 

Thus it is that the influence of Heliodorus upon 
Greene goes deep. Unlike the influence of 
Achilles Tatius, it does not cease when it has 
given Greene incident and ornament, phrase and 
tag; but it gives him the basis and structural 
members of his romance — the actuating force, the 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 429 

transitional scenes, the peripeteia, the moment of 
last suspense, the catastrophe. 

Yet Greene, it should be remembered, is in- 
capable of fully utilizing this legacy of form. 
The outcome of his labors is very different from 
the well-nigh faultless joinery exhibited in the 
"iEthiopica." He often leaves his personages 
uncharacterized or inconsistently characterized, 
their actions unmotived or foolishly motived, his 
plot wanting in essential links. He defeats ex- 
pectation, not deliberately, but from forgetfulness 
or sheer incompetence. Near the beginning of 
"Mamillia" (II), 15, we hear of Florion, who, 
serving with Mamillia at the court of the Duke 
of Venice, has formed with her a friendship 
founded upon virtue. (16) He has had experi- 
ence of women's wiles, and has gained wisdom. 
(18) He retires from court to the country at 
Sienna, and persuades Mamillia likewise to retire, 
to her father's house in Padua. (37-9) She re- 
ceives a letter from him, warning her to beware 
of love. All this leads us to expect either that he 
will be the hero of the story, a virtuous cynical 
contemplative malcontent like Euphues (whom so 
far he has emulated), and a possible rival to the 
Machiavellian Pharicles, or that, if he is not to 
be a suitor to Mamillia, at least he is to be kept 
for future use, that he may prove a true friend 
when Pharicles has deserted her. But, after the 
comment (42) on his letter, nothing more is heard 
of him. He has been made only to be thrown 
away. He is not like the messenger whom He- 
liodorus created, and dropped when he had deliv- 



43° THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

ered his message ("JEth.," VI. iii, iv) or even like 
Greene's own awkward " prophetesse " in " Mena- 
phon" (ante, pp. 427-8) ; for both of these had 
at least a place in the economy of the tale, and 
neither of them was at all characterized; while 
Florion is characterized at least in outline, and at 
the same time has nothing to do with the story. 
He is a false start, not erased from a finished 
work. Later in " Mamillia " (II. 135), Phar- 
icles goes into voluntary exile in Sicily — why, no 
man knows. For it does not appear that Ma- 
millia's family are seeking to punish him for his 
abandonment of her, or that he is retiring in 
order to overcome his new love for Publia — each 
a. possible motive. There he is — and that is all. 
So it is in numerous instances throughout 
Greene's works. 53 But nothing exhibits more 
strikingly Greene's essential weaknesses in char- 
acterization and structure than " Menaphon " it- 
self. Framed, as has been seen, upon the model 
of the "yEthiopica," and with the additional ad- 
vantage of an English pattern in Sidney's 
"Arcadia," it is nevertheless the loosest thing 
Greene ever wrote. At the beginning (VI. 33) 
Democles is said to be " a man as iust in his cen- 
sures as royall in his possessions, as carefull for 
the weale of his countrey, as the continuance of 
his diadem." But later we learn (ib., 113) that, 
utterly without motive, he " committed his daugh- 
ter with her tender babe, her husbande Maximus, 
and Lamed on, his unckle, without oare or 
mariner to the furie of the merciles waves " ; the 

63 E. g n 4t Carde of Fancie " (IV), 124-5, as against 140- 
141; " Planetomachia " (V), passim, 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 43 1 

result being that "his Queen with Sephestiaes 
losse (who she deemed to be dead) tooke such 
thought, that within short time after she died." 54 
Moreover (ib.) "he spent his time in all kinde 
of pleasures that either art or expence might 
affoord, so that for his dissolute life he seemed 
another Heliogabalus." And the remainder of 
his conduct throughout the second half of the 
tale wholly contradicts the initial assertion about 
him. Menaphon himself, who as a sort of a 
pastoral hero is meant to have our sympathy, 
turns Samela out of his house with insults (101, 
2) because she rejects his love. Pleusidippus's 
shield, we learn (112) bears the device of Venus 
on the waves because he has been carried off 
by pirates. So this was not a family coat of 
arms. But when he fights (132-5) with his 
father, the latter bears the same device, and each 
is angry at the other's presumption. Samela, 
recognizing her father but unrecognized by him, 
allows him to woo her, and says nothing about 
their relationship. Pleusidippus her son, when 
he was stolen from her by pirates, was a well- 
grown boy, already a leader among his comrades, 
and certainly old enough to know his mother by 
sight and as a shepherdess named Samela. Yet 
back he comes to woo her, in ignorance, Greene 
would have us believe, of the fact that she is his 
mother. What Greene must bring about, in the 
face of nature, is this preposterous situation: a 
woman, betrothed to her husband, and courted 

64 Cf. "Pandosto" (IV), 261: Bellaria's death follows 
closely upon the exposure of one of her children and the 
death of another. 



432 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

by her father and her son! 55 Apparently he 
seeks to outdo the famous situation in Sidney's 
"Arcadia": a man betrothed to a maiden and 
courted by her father and her mother. In like 
manner the absurd condition imposed by 
Sephestia — that the oracle must be fulfilled be- 
fore she will marry Maximius (ante, p. 424) ; the 
absurd silence of the pair as to their identity 
(ante, p. 427) ; and the absurd old woman who 
discloses it (ante, p. 428) ; are all due to Greene's 
desire to emulate the "yEthiopica." In " Mena- 
phon" at least, the imitation of Greek Romance 
is a hindrance rather than a help. It is other- 
wise in " Pandosto," the best of Greene's works, 
and the one which, as has been said, most fully 
exhibits the influence of Greek Romance. The 
final discussion both of " Pandosto " and of 
" Menaphon " is reserved until after a considera- 
tion of Greene's indebtedness to Longus. 

Common to Greene and Longus, if not derived 
from Longus by Greene, is the employment of 
the pastoral as "an element in the harmonious 
solution of a longer story," 56 a story of city or 
court. The long tradition of which this is a 
phase probably includes, broadly speaking, all 
those escapes from the life active to the life con- 
templative which afford relief to the course of 
epic narration: escapes to the Lower World, or 
to Fortunate Islands, or — as in Tasso's epic — to 
the country as well. Specifically, however, the 

85 Cf. Wolff, "Greene and the Italian Renaissance," 
p. 35i. 

66 C. H. Herford, ed. "The Eversley Shakespeare": In- 
troduction to " The Winter's Tale," Vol. IV, p. 268. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 433 

pastoral as a Renaissance genre is not so used, at 
least in its chief Italian examples: in Sannazaro 
there is only a suggestion — and that cryptic — of 
some grief which the author has suffered in 
Naples, and for which he seeks solace among the 
shepherds ; the " Aminta " is purely a " favola 
boschereccia " ; and the "Pastor Fido," despite 
its elaborate apparatus of oracles, messengers, 
restorations, and recognitions (partly from Greek 
tragedy, partly from Greek romance) is also 
without the slightest urban enveloping action. 
Possibly, then, this employment of the pastoral is 
distinctive of Elizabethan fiction; at all events 
it is very general there. It occurs in Sidney's 
"Arcadia"; in Wiliam Warner's 57 story (in 
verse) of Argentile and Curan ("Albions Eng- 
land," IV. 20) ; in Lodge's " Rosalynde " (and 
in "As You Like It"); in Greene's "Tullies 
Love," "Menaphon" and " Pandosto " (and in 
"The Winter's Tale"). 

The gentle ridicule of rustic speech, manners 
and attire has been remarked {ante, p. 122) as a 
natural result of the urban point of view. This 
ridicule is also common to Longus and Greene, if 
not derived by Greene from Day's paraphrase of 
"Daphnis and Chloe." "Pandosto," containing 
Greene's first pastoral, appeared in 1588, a year 
later than Day's paraphrase; and it makes fun 
of Porrus's holiday array (IV. 296) very much 
as Day makes fun of Dorcon's efforts to render 
himself clean and acceptable in Chloe's sight. 

87 Warner was acquainted with Heliodorus, whom he imi- 
tated in " Pan his Syrinx," a collection of prose tales 
based on the "iEthiopica." Oeftering, 96. 
29 



434 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

(Day 22-4; not in the original or in Amyot, but 
part of Day's interpolation to fill the lacuna. 
See post, Ap. A, p. 465-6.) Greene's other works 
that contain a pastoral element exhibit in every 
case this same ridicule. "Menaphon" (VI), 
135-139, describes comically the rustic courtship 
of Doron and Carmela, (ib.) 119 quotes Doron's 
description of Samela in homely language full 
of bombast and bathos, and (ib.) 56-7 makes 
fun of Menaphon's own russet jacket and round 
slop, and of his honest russet and kersey efforts 
to entertain the fine folk his guests. In " Fran- 
cescos Fortunes" (VIII), 184 ff, the pastoral tale 
told by the host "describes a comical ugly shep- 
herd Mullidor, and his old mother Callena, who 
is proud of her lumpish son. In " Mourning 
Garment" (IX), 141-4, Philador finds in 
Thessaly a shepherd and his wife, whose homely 
costume — russet cloak, green coat, scarlet cas- 
sock, and the rest, — is detailed with a smile. In 
"Farewell to Folly" (IX), 265, Maesia, daugh- 
ter of the exiled Countie Selydes, retires to the 
country to seek work, and encounters a wealthy 
farmer's son who takes her into his parents' ser- 
vice. His holiday finery is minutely described: 
" a strawne hat steeple-wise . . . tawnye worsted 
iacket ... a pair of hose of red kersie, close 
trust with a point afore ... his pompes were a 
little too heauie, being trimmed start-vps made 
of a paire of boote legges." The everyday 
clothes and the wedding outfit of Tomkins the 
Wheelwright and Kate the Milkmaid, in " Vision " 
(XII), 224-5, ar e similarly ridiculed. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 435 

Greene agrees with Longus again in (theo- 
retically at least) excluding from his pastoral 
the activity of Fortune. Life among the shep- 
herds is secure ; for " Fortune is blinde, and must 
either misse of her aime, or shoote at a great 
marke: her boltes flie not so lowe as beggerie." 
(''Farewell," IX. 282.) That they who are 
down need fear no fall, is one of Greene's 
favorite sentiments 58 (cf. ante, p. 381); in 
general, " the poore estate scornes fortunes angrie 
frowne" (" Farewell, " IX. 279) and to retire to 
the country is to safeguard oneself against her 
vicissitudes. " Royal Exchange " (VII), 242-3: 
" Scipio the Affrican after all his glorious vic- 
tories sequestrating himselfe in a graunge place, 
beeing demanded why he woulde not live any 
longer in the Commonwealth, aunswered, for that 
[he was] flying from the iniuries of Fortune." 
But in practice Greene admits Fortune as a vera 
causa into his pastorals. Samela, Maximius, 
and Pleusidippus, in " Menaphon," and Fawnia, 
in " Pandosto," are still the playthings of For- 
tune after they have gone to live among the 
shepherds. In fact, Greene speaks of " Mena- 
phon " as a " pastorall historie, conteyning the 
manifolde iniuries of fortune" (Epistle Dedica- 
tory, VI. 5-6) ; and again, at the end of the 
tale (145-6), as "this pastorall accident" — 
which is precisely what it is. 

The substitution by Longus of Love in For- 

63 "Menaphon" (VI), 38-9, 48-9; " Perimedes " (VII), 
42, 59 ; " Farewell " (IX), 263, 279, 282 ; " Penelopes Web " 
(V), 178, 183, 185; "Pandosto" (IV), 249, 282; "Philo- 
mela" (XI), 192. 



43$ THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

tune's place is paralleled, in Greene, by so close 
an association of Love and Fortune that Greene 
often leaves in doubt which of them is the vera 
causa. In "Censure" (VI), 180, Maedyna, 
struggling against her lawless passion for Vorty- 
mis, hopes " that time would weare out that 
which fond Love and Fortune had wrought." In 
"Menaphon" (VI) Love and Fortune are com- 
pared, and railed at together, 59 and (ib., 103) 
Menaphon complains : " Love and Fortune 
proves my equall foes." In "Planetomachia " 
(V), 113, Psammetichus hearing that the woman 
he loves is Rhodope the courtesan, "beganne in 
most cruel termes to exclaime against Love and 
Fortune." 60 Together, Love and Fortune favor 
the bold. 61 Love itself is the effect of Fate or 

69 " The thoughtes of a lover never continue scarce a 
minute in one passion, but as Fortunes globe, so is fancies 
seate variable and inconstant." 

Cf. Propertius, II. viii : 

Omnia vertuntur, certe vertuntur amores : 
Vinceris, aut vincis, haec in amore rota est. 

On an antique engraved gem, Eros is represented on 
Fortune's wheel (Furtwangler, " Berlin " 6767 ; Reinach, 
plate 75, no. 26). 

60 Other passages in which Love and Fortune cooperate, 
with functions undifferentiated: " Pandosto," IV. 281; 
u Perimedes," VII. 47 ; " Never too Late," VIII. 43, 65 ; 
" Francescos Fortunes," VIII. 134; " Alcida," IX. 67, 93; 
"Mourning Garment," IX. 158; "Philomela," XL 174; 
" Orpharion," XII. 39. In still other passages, Love is 
opposed by Fortune, the Fates, etc., and thus becomes a 
phase of Virtu (cf. ante, p. 386, n. 30). In " Censure," VI, 
160, Achilles declares: " Exteriour actions are tyed to the 
Wynges of Fortune, but thoughts as they are passionate, 
so they are within the compasse of Fancy." Fortune is 
against Love in " Carde of Fancie," IV. 55, 148, 154-5, 169, 
183, 184, 186; "Censure," VI. 186-7; "Pandosto," IV. 
290; "Tullies Love," VII. 188-9. 

n " Carde of Fancie " (IV), 80 ; " Alcida " (IX), 33-4, 35. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 437 

Fortune; it is destined, and hence irresistible. 62 
Love also shares Fortune's function of bringing 
about those bizarre situations which lead to anti- 
thesis and oxymoron. In "Tullies Love" 
(VII), 140, Flavia exclaims: "With what little 
proportion doth iniurious love bestowe his 
favors? With how small regarde doth blinde 
fortune powre out hir treasures? Making in all 
their actions contrarieties, 63 that so they may 
triumph." Here, of course, Greene's practice 
coincides with the Petrarchistic tradition of the 
Renaissance, which expresses love conventionally 
by means of "contrarieties"; 64 but it would be 

«" Philomela" (XI), 127; "Alcida" (IX), 37; " Mo- 
rando " (III), 99-108; " Arbasto " (III), 213; " Carde of 
Fancie " (IV), 92, 121, 169. For the same reason, Love is 
paramount to law, to friendship, to filial duty, — to every 
other consideration whatever. So " Carde of Fancie " (IV), 
69-70, 79, 190-191 ; " Pandosto " (IV), 237-8, 277 ; " Plane- 
tomachia" (V), 62; "Censure" (VI), 178; " Perimedes " 
(VII), 73; "Alcida" (IX>, 32; — (the last five passages 
repeating each other almost verbatim) — ; "Philomela" 
(XI), 140; "Orpharion" (XII), 30-31. 

63 " Contrarieties " is the regular term for the antitheses 
growing out of a difficult situation. Pettie, " Pallace of 
Pleasure," fol. 57V. (quoted by Bond) : "... departed 
into her chamber . . . where she entred with herselfe into 
these contrarities " [sic], Lyly, " Euphues," I. 205 : Lu- 
cilla, "all the company being departed to their lodgings, 
entred into these termes and contrarieties." In each case 
there follows the usual antithetical soliloquy. 

•* " Arbasto," III. 203 : Love is " a paine shadowed with 
pleasure, and a ioy stuffed with miserie." (Repeated ver- 
batim in "Alcida," IX. 40.) "Debate," IV. 221: 
how many sundrie passions doe perplexe the poore pas- 
sionate Louers . . . : as to have ones heart separated from 
himselfe, to bee now in peace and then in war, . . . seek- 
ing that carefullie which hee seemeth to flie, and yet 
doubtfullie dreading not to finde it ... to burne in colde 



43$ THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

hazardous to say that Greene was not affected by 
the antithetical treatment of love in " Daphnis 
and Chloe." 65 

Greene's direct borrowings from Longus are 
few. In " Menaphon," VI. 91 the abduction of 
Pleusidippus parallels in some detail the abduc- 
tion of Daphnis ("D and C," I. xxviii; Day, 
41-2). Both abductions are accomplished by 
pirates who have stolen cattle, but who at sight 
of the boy desire him more than their other 
booty. The passages are here transcribed. 

and freeze in heate, to bee crossed altogether with con- 
traries." " Alcida," IX. 31: " Louers . . . count not them- 
selves happy, but in their supposed vnhappinesse : beeing at 
most ease in disquiet ; at greatest rest, when they are most 
troubled ; seeking contentation in care, delight in misery, 
and hunting greedily after that which alwaies breedeth 
endlesse harme." 

65 Some miscellaneous phases of love-doctrine common to 
Greene and to Greek Romance may be noted here. Love 
enters the heart through the eye : " Menaphon," VI. 63, 85 ; 
" Mourning Garment," IX. 168-9. Lovers' souls meet in a 
kiss: " Philomela," XI. 124. Love feeds the eye and closes 
the stomach : " Menaphon," VI. 54, 57 ; " Tullies Love," 
VII. 116; "Alcida," IX. 79; "Mourning Garment," IX. 
166-7; " Orpharion," XII. 70-72. Love gives the lover 
virtue and courage : " Morando," III.V90 ff ; in fact it 
metamorphoses his character : " Carde of Fancie," IV. 48-9 ; 
" Tullies Love," VII. 185-9 (cf. ante, p. 374). Throughout 
his earlier works Greene continually alludes to Greek erotic 
legends ; e. g., " Morando," III. 67 Danae ; Cephalus and 
Procris ; 70 Eriphile ; 73 Phillis and Demophon ; Paris and 
Oenone ; Ulisses and Circes ; Campaspe, Apelles, and Alex- 
ander ; 82 Polipheme and Galatea ; 83 Ariadne ; Medea ; 
105 Echo and Narcissus; Salmacis; Biblis ; Hylonome ; 115 
Achillis and Polixena. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 439 

"Daphnisand Day, 41-2 "Menaphon," 

Chloe," I. VI. 91 

xxviii 

TvptoL XrjaTal " Certaine ro- " Pleusidippus 

- ^WavViws uers of T y re 0n a time 

v ~ A robbed and spoil- walking on the 

, , \ ed the seehe Dor- shore, . . . there 

/3aVOV(TLV K<XL TOV ^ Qf ^j his arrived on the 

Aa<^>vtv aXvovra beastes and cat- strond a Thes- 

irapa rrjv OaXacr- tell . . . And salian Pirate 

o-av. MSovresSe coursing as they named Eurilo- 

/ ' were up and down chus, who after 

fxeipajaov fxtya .^ ^ Island, he had forraged 

Kot KaAov icpar- Daphnis by m in the Arcadian 

tov TTjs «£ &y- hap walking on confines, driuing 

po>v dp7ray^?, the sea-banke, before him a 

fXTjKtTL fxrjBkv es was by themsur- large bootie of 

ra ? atyas, prfi P rised > • • ■ * he h *.* at * tC \ h u is 
v „ ' rouers seeing this ships, espied this 

7 7* ? yong youth, f aire, pretie infant; 

aypovs ircpcep- seem iy j and when gazing on 

yaadfxevoL, Karrj- strong, and think- his face, ... his 

yovairov. ing him of better thought never 

regard than any thirsted so much 

part else of their after any pray, 

prize, they made as this pretie 

no further pur- Pleusidippus pos- 

sute after his session." 

goates . . ." 

As this is the last of the numerous borrowings 
from Greek Romance that enter into the com- 
position of "Menaphon," it is now possible to 
assign to each of these borrowings its place in the 
whole, as well as to estimate the relative im- 



44° THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

portance of the Greek Romances, of Sidney's 
"Arcadia," and of Warner's story of Argentile 
and Curan, as sources of Greene's romance. 
The detailed discussion thus required will be ren- 
dered more intelligible by a brief summary of 
" Menaphon " : 

A plague having visited Arcadia, King Democles 
receives from "Delphos" a riddling oracle, which 
bids the Arcadians look for a happy time when 
certain apparently impossible conditions shall have 
been fulfilled. Later — (how much later does not 
appear) — the King causes his daughter Sephestia, 
her husband Maximius, her infant son Pleusidippus, 
and her uncle Lamedon to be set adrift in a boat 
without mariner, oar or sail. (The reason for this 
inhumanity does not appear.) The Queen, Sephestia's 
mother, dies of grief. The castaways, except Maxi- 
mius, whom Sephestia believes to be lost, are wrecked 
upon the coast of Arcadia in sight of Menaphon, 
the King's chief shepherd, who receives them into 
his cottage and falls in love with Sephestia. She 
tells him that her name is Samela, and that she 
comes from Cyprus; and keeps him in play with 
doubtful and dilatory answers to his suit. At a 
gathering of the shepherds, Sephestia sees the sup- 
posed shepherd Melicertus — really her husband Max- 
imius disguised, who has reached the shore in 
safety. He sees her too, and is struck with her 
resemblance to his lost wife; she with his resem- 
blance to her lost husband ! They fall in love afresh. 
Stung by jealousy, Menaphon insults Sephestia, who 
with her uncle and son leaves his house and sets up 
a cottage of her own. Melicertus courts her and 
gives her a "Description of his Mistres," as if he 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 44 1 

has had another. She promises to be his wife when 
the oracle is fulfilled! Pleusidippus, now a well- 
grown boy, and a leader among his playfellows, is 
seized by pirates on the shore and sent by them to 
the King of Thrace as a gift. His beauty wins him 
gentle treatment; he is knighted; and the King 
means that his own daughter Olympia shall be 
Pleusidippus's wife. The young people are willing, 
but there has reached Thrace the report of the 
beauty of Samela, the Arcadian shepherdess, and 
Pleusidippus cannot rest till he has beheld her. He 
goes to Arcadia and falls in love with her ! Demo- 
cles too has heard of her, and is now in disguise 
among the shepherds in order to woo her. She 
repulses both her father and her son, recognizing 
the former but saying nothing ! Democles persuades 
Pleusidippus to carry her off to a castle of the 
King's near by, and there tries by threats to compel 
her to yield. A party of shepherds led by Meli- 
certus comes to her rescue; and Melicertus and 
Pleusidippus are about to engage in single combat, 
when Democles, who sees that, whoever wins, he 
must lose, induces them to postpone their fight three 
days. In the interval he sends for troops, whom he 
places in ambush near the lists. Melicertus and 
Pleusidippus having fought awhile are both taken 
prisoners by these troops, who overawe the shep- 
herds. Pleusidippus, as a favorite of the powerful 
King of Thrace, is soon released, but Melicertus 
and Samela are imprisoned together, for Democles 
has resolved to put them both to death. They are 
led forth to execution; but just before the fatal 
stroke "there stept out on olde woman attired like 
a Prophetesse, who cryed out Villaine holde thy 
hand," told who Melicertus, Pleusidippus, and Sa- 
mela really were, and declared that the oracle was 
fulfilled. "At this, the people gaue a great shout, 



44 2 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

and the olde woman vanisht." The King of Thrace 
is sent for, with his daughter, whom Pleusidippus 
marries. Menaphon, unable to get Samela, marries 
his old love Pesana; and the comic pastoral lovers, 
Doron and Carmela, are married too. 

It has been thought 68 that " Menaphon " is de- 
rived from William Warner's tale of Argentile 
and Curan, in "Albions England" (1586), Bk. 
IV, ch. 20. The extent of the indebtedness will 
be clear from the following summary: 

Argentile, daughter of King Adelbright, is left 
by his death to the guardianship of his brother, 
King Edel, who has shared with him the Kingdom 
of Diria. False to his trust, and wishing to usurp 
Argentile's share, Edel will not give her in mar- 
riage to any man of her own rank. But Curan, 
" sonne unto a prince in Danske," has fallen in love 
with her, and, in order to gain access to her, be- 
comes a kitchen drudge in Edel's court. He reveals 
to her his love and his parentage, but she rejects 
him. Edel favors this supposedly base match, and 
Argentile, in order to escape* it, flees from court. 
Curan becomes a shepherd. After two years he falls 
in love with a neighboring neatherd's maid, and in 
telling her his love, confesses that he formerly loved 
another, whom he describes. The neatherd's maid 
is Argentile, who now returns Curan's love. They 
are married; and Curan reconquers her kingdom. 

w Joseph Quincy Adams, " Greene's ' Menaphon ' and 
'The Thracian Wonder,'" in Modern Philology, III. 317- 
18; cited with approval by J. W. H. Atkins, in "The Cam- 
bridge History of English Literature," III. ch. xvi, p. 406. 
(Mr. Adams's "Thomas Forde's 'Love's Labyrinth'" de- 
rives " Argentile and Curan " from " Havelok the Dane.") 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



443 



Common to Warner's story and to Greene's are 
the meeting of royal persons in the country as 
shepherd and shepherdess, their failure to recog- 
nize one another, their falling in love, the lover's 
acknowledgment that he has had another mis- 
tress, his giving his new mistress a description of 
her, and the actual identity of the new mistress 
with the old. 

More numerous and rather more important are 
Greene's imitations of Sidney : 



"Arcadia." 


" Menaphon." 


(Name) Pyrocles. 


(Name) Democles. 


(Name) Pamela, a princess in 


(Name) Samela, a princess in 


rustic retirement. 


rustic retirement. 


(Name) Dorus, a prince dis- 


( Name ) Doron, a shepherd. 


guised as a shepherd. 




Setting : Arcadia 


Setting : Arcadia. 


Paradoxical Oracle to King of 


Paradoxical Oracle to King of 


Arcadia. 


Arcadia. 



(Also in "yEthiopica"). 



A prince of Thessaly. 
Wife of King of Arcadia was 
born in Cyprus. 

Hero is cast ashore in sight of 
shepherds, who rescue him. 

Zelmane, betrothed to Phil- 
oclea, is wooed by both Ba- 
silius and Gynecia, his be- 
trothed' s father and mother, 
respectively. 

Pamela, a prisoner in the castle 
of her suitor, is threatened if 
she will not yield. 



A King of Thessaly. 

Daughter of King of Arcadia 
feigns that she was born in 
Cyprus. 

Heroine is cast ashore in sight 
of shepherd, who rescues 
her. 

Sephestia, betrothed to Maxi- 
mius, is wooed by both 
Democles and Pleusidippus, 
her own father and son, re- 
spectively. 

Samela, a prisoner in the castle 
of her suitor, is threatened if 
she will not yield. 



And the artless disclosure of the oracle at the 
very beginning of " Menaphon," together with 



444 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

the movement of the story chronologically from 
that point on, are probably due to Greene's in- 
ability to master the complicated technique of 
the " New Arcadia." He contents himself here 
with imitating the " Old Arcadia," which quotes 
the oracle at the beginning, and moves thence for- 
ward in order of time. 

Most numerous, and most important because 
most structural, are the elements taken over into 
" Menaphon " from Greek Romance. These will 
now be gathered together in brief summary, each 
with a reference to its separate and more detailed 
discussion in the foregoing pages : 

Paradoxical oracle. Ante, p. 422 (cf. 
"^Ethiopica"). 

Exposure of King's daughter. Ante, p. 425 
(cf. "JEthiopica"). 

Shipwreck of King's daughter and her hus- 
band results in their restoration. Ante, p. 410 
(cf. "^thiopica"). 

Heroine quick at making up a false story of 
her birth, parentage and country. Ante, p. 412, 
n. 43. (cf. "^Ethiopica"). 

Menaphon, before he has seen Samela, dis- 
dains love. Ante, p. 413-414 (cf. " iEthiopica " 
and " Clitophon and Leucippe"). 

Close association of Love and Fortune in a 
pastoral. Ante, pp. 435-436 (cf. "Daphnis and 
Chloe"). 

King's daughter finds her native land more 
dangerous than foreign lands: antithesis dwelt 
upon; verbal parallel. Ante, p. 415 (cf. 
'VEthiopica"). 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 445 

Gentle ridicule of rustic manners and dress. 
Ante, pp. 433-4 (cf. " Daphnis and Chloe"). 

" Pathetic optics " of Melicertus and Samela's 
meeting, Ante, p. 419, n. 50 (cf. "iEthiopica"). 

Boy carried off by pirates: detail. Ante, p. 
439 (cf. "Daphnis and Chloe"). 

Heroine betrothes herself with understanding 
that marriage not to be consummated till ful- 
filment of oracle. Ante, p. 424 (cf. "yEthio- 
pica' , ). 

Heroine and her lover-husband imprisoned 
together. Ante, pp. 4 2 5~6 (cf. "vEthiopica"). 

" Moment of last suspense " ; silence as to 
identity; hieratic agent of catastrophe; recogni- 
tion; fulfilment of oracle; etc., in detail, with 
verbal parallel. Ante, pp. 426-8 (cf. "JEthio- 

pica"). 

Thus in compounding " Menaphon " Greene 
took something from Warner; more from Sid- 
ney, and, through him, from Greek Romance; 
and most from Greek Romance direct. 

Other than " Menaphon," " Pandosto " is the 
only one of Greene's romances to use material 
from "Daphnis and Chloe." And as the bor- 
rowings of " Pandosto " from Heliodorus and 
Achilles Tatius have already been discussed in 
detail, the borrowings from Longus will now be 
set forth in their place as parts of the whole, 
in the course of a general summary similar to 
that just given (ante, p. 444) in the case of 
"Menaphon." The plot of "Pandosto," how- 
ever, need not be analyzed here ; in its large out- 
line the same as that of "The Winter's Tale," 



446 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

which is based upon it, it may be assumed to be 
well known. 

As soon as Greene has finished with the im- 
mediate consequences of his opening situation — 
the jealousy of King Pandosto and the imprison- 
ment of his Queen, Bellaria — the earmarks of 
Greek Romance begin to appear. Heliodorus's 
turn comes first. Pandosto's infant daughter — 
later called Fawnia — is exposed for reasons and 
under circumstances the same as those in the 
case of Chariclea (ante, p. 424) : father's jealous 
suspicion; commitment of child to Fortune; ad- 
dition of tokens for identification; mother's 
lament. Deeper, though less specific, is the im- 
press of the "^Ethiopica" upon the trial-scene, 
with its attempt to borrow, not motif and inci- 
dent only, but the Heliodorean method: transi- 
tional ensemble scene; trial and vindication of 
chastity ; oracle vindicating chastity and promot- 
ing restoration of exposed child; suspense; 
pathos; sudden turn; theatrical activity of For- 
tune (ante, pp. 420-421). 

Upon Bellaria's death, the interest shifts to the 
fortunes of Fawnia among the shepherds. For 
these, constituting the second part of his romance, 
Greene may have taken a hint from the fortunes 
of Chariclea, who was likewise reared by shep- 
herds ("JEth.," IV. viii). But it could have 
been only a hint. Heliodorus does not enlarge 
upon the pastoral bringing up of his heroine ; and 
clearly enough the obvious source for pastoral 
detail would be "Daphnis and Chloe." In fact, 
with the death of the King's son and heir Garin- 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 447 

ter (ante, p. 421), Longus enters Greene's story, 
not to leave it till the pastoral portion of it is 
done. Greene borrows from Longus this Motif 
of the death of the elder after the exposure of 
the younger child, and numerous details and inci- 
dents of the rinding of Fawnia, of her rural life, 
and of her foster-father's discovery of her to her 
real father. These he obtains, mostly, by com- 
pounding particulars regarding Daphnis with cor- 
responding particulars regarding Chloe, and using 
the composite for Fawnia. The Table on pp. 
448-450 shows Greene's borrowings, and shows, 
too, (see *) that Greene used Day's version, 
taking from it several details that are not in the 
Greek or in Amyot. 



443 



THE GREEK R0MANCE3 IN 











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ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 



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ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 45 1 

Between the shepherd's resolve and his dis- 
closure (see last two entries in the Table), 
Dorastus and Fawnia elope on shipboard, and 
are at first favored by Fortune with fair winds, 
but are soon overtaken by a storm and driven to 
Bohemia, a country at that time hostile to them 
(302). The shipwreck of eloping lovers upon 
a hostile shore is of course an inevitable incident 
of Greek Romance, and occurs both to Clitophon 
and Leucippe (III. i-iv) and to Theagenes and 
Chariclea (V. xxvii-xxviii). Next, before 
Fawnia is identified by means of the shepherd's 
disclosure of the circumstances under which he 
found her, Pandosto, not knowing who she is, 
woos her brutally, with threats and insults like 
those of Thersander to Leucippe (A. T., VI. xx). 
And now appears a motif from Heliodorus 
again : King Pandosto not knowing his daughter 
Fawnia, who after her exposure has been re- 
stored to him, orders her to be put to death (314- 
315). The incident comes from the "iEthio- 
pica " : King Hydaspes, not knowing his daughter 
Chariclea, who after her exposure has been re- 
stored to him, orders her to be put to death 
(X. vii ff.). In each story this incident occupies 
the same position and performs the same struc- 
tural function: it gives a "moment of last sus- 
pense" before the final disclosure, recognition, 
and happy ending (ante, pp. 426 fT). 

Much of the foregoing material, taken by 
Greene from the Greek Romances, and embodied 
in "Pandosto," Shakespeare in turn takes over 
into "The Winter's Tale." He discards the 



452 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

borrowings from Achilles Tatius — the brutal 
wooing — for he is not going to let Leontes woo 
Perdita. But he utilizes some of Greene's bor- 
rowings from Heliodorus and most of those from 
Longus. The exposure with tokens, the express 
commitment to Fortune, ("W. T.," II. iii, 
179 if), and the trial scene, with its oracle and 
peripeteia, are in Shakespeare as in Greene. 
How largely the pastoral details borrowed by 
"Pandosto" from " Daphnis and Chloe " figure 
again in " The Winter's Tale " appears from the 
Table already referred to. 

Shakespeare may, indeed, have taken most of 
these details directly from " Daphnis and Chloe " 
quite as well as from " Pandosto." The Table 
shows that all but two ( e ) are in Day as well 
as in Greene. Moreover, there is in "The 
Winter's Tale " one detail hitherto unmentioned, 
which Shakespeare might have found in Day, but 
could not have found in Greene at all. These 
facts point to the probability that Day's " Daphnis 
and Chloe " is not only a secondary but a primary 
source of " The Winter's Tale." 

The detail just mentioned is that of the hunt 
(W. T., III. iii) ; and it is important because it is 
more than an ornament, like Chloe's and Fawnia's 
garland, and Perdita's flowers ; it is structural to 
the play — an essential of its dramatic economy. 
If one may be permitted to reason such a matter 
out a priori, the hunt appears to be necessitated 
in some such way as this: Shakespeare seems to 
have desired to employ, in " The Winter's Tale," 
normal causation and human motive wherever 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 453 

possible, instead of chance. This desire would 
render him dissatisfied with Greene's easy fashion 
of letting mere Fortune cast the child on the 
coast of the very country where reigns the un- 
justly suspected friend of her father,— the 
country where that friend's son will afterward 
fall in love with this very child grown to girlhood. 
Shakespeare perhaps realized that while a ro- 
mancer might properly ask such a favor of For- 
tune—notoriously the guide and mistress of Ro- 
mance, yet a dramatist was bound more closely 
to probability. For the purpose, then, of getting 
the child exposed in Bohemia and nowhere else, 
he invented Antigonus. Leontes commissions 
Antigonus to expose it somewhere, and Anti- 
gonus's own belief in Hermione's guilt— together 
with the request of Hermione's phantom in a 
dream supposed to be sent by Apollo— leads him 
to expose it in Bohemia, the country of the child's 
supposed father: 

A**- "I do believe 

Hermione hath suffered death, and that 
Apollo would, this being indeed the issue 
Of King Polixenes, it should here be laid, 
Either for life or death, upon the earth 
Of its right father." 

(W. T., III. iii, 41 ff.) 

Once invented, however, Antigonus must be 
killed as soon as he has performed his task of 
exposing Perdita ; and this both for the sake of 
poetic justice, because he is willing to carry out 
his King's cruel behest, and for the sake of put- 



454 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

ting him completely out of the way, that Leontes 
may not learn from him of Perdita's fate. 
Something is needed to kill Antigonus. 

Together with this need arises the need for 
some plausible means of inducing a shepherd, 
who would not ordinarily walk along the beach, 
to go thither and find the exposed child. In 
"Daphnis and Chloe" the children are found 
inland, in a thicket and a cave respectively ; there 
is no question of the seaside or of any reason 
why the herdsman should walk there; and, 
furthermore, the straying of the she-goat and the 
ewe, which leads the herdsman to the child, is 
motived by the desire to give it suck. Greene 
had eliminated this motive, but at the same time 
had given himself a new problem in having the 
child cast ashore, and thus requiring that the 
shepherd be led thither. This problem he slurred 
over, simply letting the sheep stray for no par- 
ticular reason and letting the shepherd hear the 
child cry. With such careless motivation and de- 
pendence upon chance Shakespeare was appar- 
ently as dissatisfied as he was with the fortuitous 
casting of the child upon just the shore where it 
would later be required. 

Both problems he finds solved at once in an- 
other passage of "Daphnis and Chloe," — a 
passage which gives him both the means to punish 
Antigonus and the means to drive the sheep to 
the seaside. This is the incident (" D. and C," 
II. xiii) of the young Methymnaeans' hunting, 
the noise of which frightens the sheep and goats 
from their upland pastures down to the shore. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 455 

What more consonant with dramatic economy 
than that Shakespeare should have borrowed this 
hunt, and have used it both to send the bear that 
devours Antigonus, and at the same time to 
frighten the sheep away from the hills so that the 
shepherd must seek them along the shore and 
there find the child ? This, at any rate, is the use 
Shakespeare has made of the hunt. 

Now, the motif of the hunt is not in Greene. 
There is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare 
invented it, when it lay ready to his hand in Day's 
version of " Daphnis and Chloe " (64-65). 

Shakespeare has thus substituted natural causa- 
tion and human agency in the place of Fortune, 
to bring about first Perdita's exposure in Bo- 
hemia, and next the finding of her by the shep- 
herd. In the same way he rejects the storm, 
which, in " Pandosto " (302), by chance again, 
sent Dorastus and Fawnia to the land of her 
hostile father; and substitutes for it Camillo's 
deliberate advice and Florizel's avowed decision 
to visit Leontes in Sicillia ("W. T.," IV. iv, 
546 ft*). At no less than three points, then, all 
of them structural, the tvxv of Heliodorus and 
Achilles Tatius, the overworked Fortune of 
Greene, gives place, in Shakespeare, to motive 
and probable cause. The familiar material of 
Greek Romance, selected haphazard by the writer 
of English fiction, has undergone at the hands of 
the dramatist a second process of sifting, — this 
time with full artistic intent. 



Considered at large, the influence of the Greek 
Romances upon Greene exhibits a definite chron- 



456 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

ological movement. It begins with mere tran- 
scripts from Achilles Tatius in "Arbasto" 
(1584), "Morando" (1587; ? 1584) and " Carde 
of Fancie" (1587; ? 1584) — a stage of imma- 
turity and superficiality, which, in the main, bor- 
rows non-structural ornament. " Philomela/' 
which seems to fall in immediately after this 
group, shows Greene taking less from Achilles 
Tatius (only the trial at the end), and more 
from Heliodorus, chiefly by way of incident, — 
not yet by way of structure. The influence of 
the Greek Romances reaches its height in " Pan- 
dosto" (1588), which takes a little from Achilles 
Tatius, but now gets structure as well as matter 
from the solid Heliodorus, together with incident 
and ornament from the decorative Longus. The 
influence degenerates at once in " Menaphon " 
(1589), which, though structurally based upon 
Heliodorus, is a tissue of absurdities — apparently 
one of those pamphlets that Greene " yarkt up in 
a night and a day"; a "pot-boiler" in imitation 
of the "Arcadia" and of his own successful 
" Pandosto," many of whose motifs it repeats in 
thin disguise. Almost ceasing in the realistic 
pamphlets of Greene's last years, the influence of 
Greek Romance flickers up for a moment in 
his half-realistic, half -autobiographical " Groats- 
worth" (1592) — appropriately enough in the 
form of a suggestion from Achilles Tatius (ante, 
p. 406), who is thus, as has been said, Greene's 
first and latest love among the Greek Romancers. 
If it be asked what was the effect of the Greek 
Romances upon Greene as a literary artist, the 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 457 

answer must in general be negative. Despite his 
appropriation, for the nonce, of their material 
and their structure, Greene never assimilated 
these, as he assimilated Euphuism and as he 
assimilated the Italian novella, so as to be able to 
originate them. Unlike Sidney, he never learned 
to invent Romances of his own, as he did learn to 
invent novelle of his own. The nearest he can 
come to Greek Romance is in some of its faults 
— its tychomania, its general dearth of character, 
its distorted " psychology," its labored antitheses. 
When he attempts the sustained elaborate oracle- 
guided plot of Heliodorus, he fails even with the 
"Arcadia" before him as model. When he at- 
tempts the Heliodorean setting, he fails again. 
The best he can do with Longus is to take over 
his motifs directly; the best he can do with 
Achilles Tatius is to transcribe almost verbatim 
his adventitious ornament. 

To the English novel, therefore, the Greek 
Romances make only an inconsiderable contribu- 
tion through Greene. It would be interesting, 
though idle, to speculate what might have been 
the result had Greene been ready to learn from 
Greek Romance what Lyly learned at second or 
third hand, the lesson of articulation of material, 
— a lesson spread upon every page of Boccaccio ; 
or had he, like Sidney, been capable of acquiring 
at first hand the full practice of Heliodorus's 
technique. One might as well wonder what 
would have been the result had Greene possessed 
a strong sense of causal nexus, of motive, of 
character, and of setting. In the first case, he 



45$ THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

would have produced, like Sidney, Greek Ro- 
mance in English; in the second he would have 
produced an English novel. Needless to say, he 
did neither. The best of Greene, and the best of 
what Greene found in Greek Romance, is in 
"The Winter's Tale." 



CHAPTER IV 
Thomas Nash and Thomas Lodge 

Nash makes no use whatever of the Greek 
Romances. 

Lodge alludes twice to the "JEthiopica." At 
the beginning of " Forbonius and Prisceria ,, 
(published with "An Alarum against Usurers," 
1584) he places the scene "In Memphis (the 
chiefest citie of Aegypt) ... at such time as 
Sisimithres was head Priest of the same, & 
Hidaspes gouernour of the Prouince " ; and he 
makes his heroine the daughter of " Valduuia, 
daughter and heire of Theagines of Greece, the 
copartener of sorrowe with Caricleala, the 
straunge borne childe of the Aegyptian King" 
(Hunterian Club ed., I, 53, 54~ modern paging). 
So that Prisceria is a granddaughter of Heho- 
dorus's hero and heroine. Her pedigree argues 
the popularity of the "JEthiopica "; Lodge would 
have no motive for professing to continue a story 
that was not widely and favorably known. 
Lodge's own story, however, shows no other trace 
of Heliodorus. 

In the "History of Robert, Second Duke of 
Normandy" 1591 (Hunterian Club ed., II, 52), 
the Soldan of Babylon, in love with Emine, 
daughter of the Emperor of Rome, asks his peers 
not to disapprove the match: 

"Princes woonder not, Theagines a Greeke, 
459 



460 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

loued Cariclia a Moore, & your Souldan a Ma- 
hometist, his Emine a Christian." 

The remainder of this tale, like " Forbonius 
and Prisceria," shows not the slightest indebted- 
ness to Heliodorus. 

Nor does Lodge in general exhibit the influ- 
ence of Greek Romance. An incident or two, an 
antithesis, a habit of using the pastoral to bring 
about the happy ending of an urban story, — 
these, which might be attributable to the "iEt'hio- 
pica" or to "Daphnis and Chloe" if their evi- 
dence were corroborated, fall short of probative 
force, and are not worth citation. Lodge's prose 
fiction on the whole is mediaeval, Euphuistic, and 
Italianate rather than Hellenistic. 



CONCLUSION 

The influence of Greek Romance is variously 
felt by the chief writers of Elizabethan prose 
fiction. Lyly feels it as a tradition of certain 
conventions of form adapted to the treatment of 
the theme of Two Friends; and it thus econo- 
mizes his effort in developing and articulating 
the plot of " Euphues." Lodge scarcely feels it ; 
Nash feels it not at all. Greene gets from it a 
quantity of ornament and tinsel, and an abortive 
impulse towards structure. Only in Sidney does 
Greek Romance find a talent both receptive and 
constructive. Sidney alone moves freely among 
the materials and the structures offered him by 
Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, — selecting, com- 
bining, separating, adding matter of his own or 
from other sources; working, when he will, in 
the spirit of his original, without borrowing a 
specific thing; working, when he will, in a spirit 
of his own that transforms even specific borrow- 
ings. He alone exhibits the untrammelled stride 
of the literary artist who, having closed the books 
that constitute his " sources," has their contents 
in his mind, remembered abundantly, but not re- 
membered so exactly as to be inflexible. Above 
all, he alone among the Elizabethans has devel- 
oped further on his own account, and has actually 
brought nearer perfection, the complex architec- 
tonics of Greek Romance. 
461 



462 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

And it was in this direction that English fiction 
was tending. The novella had had a magnificent, 
a double " fortune " in England. It had inspired 
similar English novelle, so easily turned, for ex- 
ample, by Greene; and then it had found upon 
the Elizabethan stage the form most completely 
expressive of that single dramatic situation 
wherein the essence of the novella consists. But 
now, in the Seventeenth Century, its vogue was 
passing away. The drama was declining; and 
fiction was turning to the more elaborate, expan- 
sive, and structural form of the romance, from 
which it was acquiring the longue haleine that is 
the condition precedent to the novel. As Rohde 
has suggested, the relation of the novella to the 
romance of the Seventeenth Century — and, we 
may add, to the modern novel — is much the same 
as the relation of the Milesian Tales to the 
"yEthiopica." In neither case does the greater 
form build itself up out of the lesser: the differ- 
ence is a difference in kind. 

It is probable that during the Seventeenth Cen- 
tury the chief influence of Greek Romance form 
upon English fiction came rather through the 
French romances than through any Elizabethan 
work. Yet to assert that, as far as later English 
fiction is concerned, Elizabethan fiction is a closed 
system, with its only issue opening into the drama, 
would be a hard saying indeed. Sidney's "Ar- 
cadia," long surviving the vogue of " Euphues " 
and of Greene's tales, remained popular through- 
out the Seventeenth Century, and alive well into 
the Eighteenth. Categorically to deny to it a 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 463 

share in building up the novel that was to come 
would be extremely rash. It seems safer to say 
that when at length character and personality 
entered English fiction, the frame had been pre- 
pared for them, at least in part, by the labors of 
Sidney. Certain it is that Richardson, 1 certain it 
is that Scott, 2 knew the "Arcadia," and used it; 
more, that they used somewhat in the " Arcadia " 
which the "Arcadia" got from Greek Romance. 
In general, then, it appears not only that the 
Greek Romances contributed variously to Eliza- 
bethan fiction itself, but also that, mediately, by 
way of Elizabethan fiction, they made two dis- 
tinct further contributions to English literature. 
The one contribution, which is quite beyond 
doubt, is a contribution to the drama: it can be 
definitely identified at its highest in " King Lear " 
and in " The Winter's Tale." The other contri- 
bution — the contribution to the development of 
the novel — will remain somewhat problematic 

1 Richardson's indebtedness to Sidney does not seem to 
have been thoroughly investigated. All that has been 
noticed is, I believe, the borrowed name " Pamela " 
(Gassmeyer, p. 11 ; Poetzsche, p. 41). A quite desultory 
examination turns up two interesting parallels, of which 
the second is very significant. (1) Clarissa's threat of 
suicide to save her honor (" Clarissa," IV, p. 160) may be 
an imitation of Philoclea's similar threat in a similar situa- 
tion — viz. captivity in the house of a lover (" Arcadia," 
III. xxiv). (2) Miss Byron's abduction by Sir Hargrave 
Pollexfen ("Grandison," v. I, Letter xxiiff.), another ab- 
duction meant to force a lady to yield to a lover, is 
apparently a reminiscence of the similar abduction of the 
Arcadian princesses ("Arcadia," III); it takes place at a 
masquerade, to which Miss Byron goes as " an Arcadian 
princess." 

1 Wolff, " Scott's Ivanhoe and Sidney's Arcadia." Kerlin, 
" Scott's Ivanhoe and Sidney's Arcadia," 



464 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

until the exact nature of the influence of Eliza- 
bethan fiction upon the Eighteenth Century is 
cleared up. Meanwhile it seems not too much to 
suggest, tentatively, as a proposition not yet fully 
established but not lightly to be denied, that the 
Greek Romances, partly through French Ro- 
mance of the Seventeenth Century, partly through 
a single Elizabethan Romance — the "Arcadia," 
helped to give to the English novel that gift 
which Greek literature has so often conferred, — 
the gift of sustained and complex form. Just as 
the "Arcadia," the only work of Elizabethan 
fiction possessing such form, was also the only 
work of Elizabethan fiction to exert a lasting 
influence, so whatever of the Greek Romances 
may survive in the modern novel is not their illu- 
sion, but that architectonic power in them which 
despite themselves makes against illusion and 
toward law. 



APPENDIX A 

Textual Notes on the relation between 

Day's and Amyot's versions of 

"Daphnis and Chloe" 

(Arabic numbers at left refer to pages in Da.) 

Prooemium 
Da omits the Prooemium. 

Book I 

13. Inserts stanza of prayer to the winged god. 

19-25. Inserts in the hiatus (not filled authen- 
tically until 1809 by P. L. Courier) an inter- 
polation apparently his own. It begins p. 19: 
" The louely shepehard thus raized up from so 
depe a dongeon," and ends, p. 25, "... hee 
brake into these farther complaints." In- 
formation given by the preserved text after the 
lacuna enabled Day to supply several points in 
the lacuna itself, — viz. that Dorco was the name 
of the cowherd who had helped to rescue Daphnis 
from the pit ; that Dorco was in love with Chloe ; 
that Dorco had given Daphnis 1 a calf ; that love 

1 The authentic passage found by Courier makes the calf 
a gift to Chloe (" D. & C," I. xv, D 136, line 21 sqq.). 
Daphnis's soliloquy, without the light shed on it by the 
fragment, leaves the recipient unindicated (" D. & C," I. 
xviii, D 137, line 25-6). Amyot, in doubt, made Daphnis 
the recipient : " J'ay souvent baise . . . le petit veau que 
Dorcon w'a donne " (A 23). Day followed him: "Often 
have I kissed . . . that fine speckled calf that Dorcon did 
give me" (Da 25); and accordingly made his reconstruc- 

31 465 



466 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

had arisen between Daphnis and Chloe ; and that 
Chloe had given Daphnis a kiss. But the re- 
mainder Day must have cut out of the whole 
cloth: — the sentiments of Daphnis; the gifts, 
other than the calf, brought by Dorco to Daphnis 
and Chloe ; 2 and Dorco's efforts to make himself 
agreeable by becoming neater in person and at- 
tire. For this last a hint may have come to Day 
from Amyot's version of the end of Daphnis's 
soliloquy: "Dorcon a la fin deviendra plus beau 
que moy" (23). 

33-34. Expands the account of D. and C.'s 
emotions upon their meeting after the night of 
sleep induced by fatigue; and adds much of his 
own thereto. (I. xxii-xxiii ; A 28 ; B 278.) 

35-6. Expands comparison of Chloe to a nymph. 
(I. xxiv; A 29; B 279.) Omits D. & C.'s sport- 
ive pelting of each other with apples. (I. xxiv; 
A 30; B 279.) 

36-7, 37-8. Inserts two songs sung by Daphnis. 
Omits Daphnis's kissing the stops of the flute 
touched by Chloe's lips. (I. xxiv; A 301; B 
279.) 

47. Inserts at the end of his First Book, a 
prose paragraph beginning " And thus continuing 
in these variable fits liued pore Daphnis"; and 
an amoeboeic duo in verse between D. and C. 

Book II 

49-52. Expands the vintage-scene, — especially 
the women's commendation of Daphnis's beauty, 

tion of the missing portion consistent: "To Daphnis be- 
sides gave hee (sc. Dorcon) a yoong fatte caife from the 
damme " (Da 23). 
'By a happy chance, he hit upon cheeses and flowers. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 467 

and the incident of the kiss bestowed on him 
by one of them. (II. i-ii; A 41-3; B 285.) 

61-62. Greatly abridges the musings of D. & 
C. upon the remedies for love as suggested by 
Philetas, their dreams thereon, and their attempts 
to find these remedies. (II. viii-xi, incl. ; A 49- 
53 ; B 290-1 ; — from the end of Philetas's speech 
to the beginning of the episode of the Methym- 
naeans.) Omits the accident that somewhat for- 
wards these attempts. (II. x-xi; A 52-3; B 
291.) 

62. Inserts a set of verses — a love-plaint to be 
carved by Daphnis upon the bark of trees. 

66. Abridges the pleas of the Methymaeans and 
of Daphnis. (II. xv-xvi; A 57-8; B 293-4.) 

69-70. Inserts set of verses — the complaint of 
Daphnis to the Nymphs. 

y2. Expands and pads out the speech of the 
nymph in Daphnis's vision. (II. xxiii; A 65 ; B 
297.) Omits the nymph's attribution of the care 
of D. & C. to Love; and inserts statements at- 
tributing it to the Nymphs. 

82. Inserts a " rufull complaint" in verse, 
" chaunted forth by Daphnis." 

Book III 

98-100. Omits Daphnis's drinking from the 
same cup as Chloe. (Ill, viii; A 89; B 310.) 
Shortens Daphnis's winter visit by omitting all 
account of the second day thereof. (Ill, x-xi; 
A 90-91 ; B 311.) (This second day he makes 
the shepherds' holiday.) 

100-123. Omits from his Third Book every- 



468 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

thing in A from the end of Daphnis's winter visit 
to the end of the Book (onward from III. xii; 
D 158; A 91 ; B 310) — nearly three quarters of 
the original Book. The omitted portion includes 
(a) the coming of spring; (b) the lesson in love; 
(c) the sailors' song; (d) the myth of Echo; 
(e) Daphnis's dream of the treasure, his finding 
of it, and his suit for Chloe with it; (/) the 
idyl of the apple. Inserts in place of these " The 
Shepherds' Holiday " — a barren and frigid inven- 
tion of his own in praise of Queen Elizabeth ; and 
so fills out and concludes his Third Book. 

Book IV 

124-135. Transposes to the opening of his 
Fourth Book most of the matter omitted from 
his Third-viz. (a), (c), (rf), (*),(/). 

124-5. Abridges (a). (III. xii-xiv; A 91- 
95; B 311-313.) Omits (b). (III. xv-xx; 
xxiv; A 95-ioo; 103-4; B 313-16; 318.) 

125. Abridges (c). (III. xxi; A 100-102; B 

316-17.) 

125-7. Gives (d) in full. (III. xxii, xxiii; A 
102-3; B 317-18.) 

130-133. Slightly abridges (<?), omitting the 
dolphin. (III. xxv-xxxii; A 104-114; B 319- 

23-) 

134-5. Slightly abridges (/), omitting the odor 
of the fruit. (III. xxxiii, xxxiv; A 11 5-1 17; 

B 324-5.) 

136. Greatly abridges the description of La- 
mon's garden, omitting the view to be had from 
it; and the paintings in the temple of Bacchus. 
(IV. ii-iii; A 1 19-21; B 326.) 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 469 

142-3. Abridges and greatly weakens the de- 
scription of Daphnis as he first appeared to 
Dionysophanes and Clearista. (IV. xiv; A 132, 

B 133.) 

143. Omits Daphnis's performance with the 
musically trained goats. (IV. xv; A 133; B 

333-) 

143. Omits Gnatho's description of Daphnis. 
(IV. xvii; A 135-6; B 335.) Omits Gnatho's 
arguments, and slightly abridges the whole inci- 
dent, but retains its essentials. (IV. xvii; A 

135-6; B 335-6.) 

148. Confuses Dionysophanes's account of the 
exposure of Daphnis (IV. xxiv; A 142) and in- 
troduces " Sophrosine his man " from IV. xxi ; 
A 140; at the same time changing the sex of 
this " nostre servante Sophrosyne." 

149-50. Abridges Chloe's lament upon Daph- 
nis's supposed desertion of her. (IV. xxvii; A 
145 ; B 340.) Omits Daphnis's soliloquy upon 
hearing that Lampis has carried off Chloe. (IV. 
xxviii; A 146; B 341.) 

Towards end of Fourth Book. Omits the 
dream of Dionysophanes (IV. xxiv; A 152; B 
344) and the dream of Megacles (IV. xxxv; A 
154; B 345)- 

At end of Fourth Book. Omits the account 
of D. & C.'s children, and of D. & C.'s devotion 
to Eros, Pan, and the Nymphs. (IV. xxxix; 
A 156; B 346.) 



APPENDIX B 

Notes and transcripts: "Clifford" MS. of 
Sidney's "Arcadia" 

Fol. 2 recto begins : " The first Booke or Acte 
of the Countefs of Pembrookes Arcadia." 
("Arcadia" ends on fol. 216 recto.) 

2 verso. Oracle to Basilius, Duke of Arcadia. 

3-4. Philanax discusses it. 

4v. Basilius's family and his disposition of its 
members. Ibid. Account of Evarchus, the just 
King of Macedon ; his war with Kings of Thrace, 
Pannonia and Epyrus, who invade his kingdom. 

5r. He sends " his youngest sonne Pyrocles 
(at that tyme but six years olde) to his sister 
the Dowager & Regent of Thessalia, there to be 
brought vp wt her sonne Musidorus. . . . And 
so grewe they vntill Pyrocles came to be xvij and 
Musidorus xviij yeares of age: At whiche tyme 
Evarchus," having conquered Thrace and taken 
up his residence in " the principal city of Thrace 
called at that tyme Bisantium . . . sent for hys 
sonne and nevew to delyght his aged eyes in 
them . . . But so pleased yt god, who reserved 
them to greater traverses bothe of good and evill 
fortune, that the sea . . . stirred to terrible 
tempest, forced them to fall from theyre course, 
vppon the coaste of Lydia. Where, what befell 
vnto them, what valyant actes they did, passing, 
in one yeares space, throughe the lesser Asia, 
Syria and Egipt, how many Ladyes they de- 
470 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 47 x 

fended from wronges, and disinherited persons 
restored to theyre righte, yt ys a worke for a 
higher style then myne; This only shall suffyce, 
that, theyre fame returned . . . fast before them 
into Greece." Returning towards Macedon 5v. 
"and so taking Arcadia in theyre way, for the 
fame of the contry, they came thether newly after 
that this straunge solitarynes had possessed Basi- 
lius. . . . They lodged in the house of Kerpenus 
(Karpenus? Kersenus?) a principall gentleman 
in Mantinea ..." where "walking with his 
hoste in a fay re gallery (Pyrocles) perceyved a 
picture " of the Duke and Duchess, and Philoclea, 
and fell in love at once. 

6r.-8v. Pyrocles discusses love with Musido- 
rus, whose opinion is harsh. 

8v. Confesses to Musidorus his love for Philo- 
clea, and his resolve "to take uppon mee the 
estate of an Amazon Lady goyng aboute the 
worlde, to practize feates of chivalry, and to 
seeke my self a worthy husband." Pyrocles is 
disguised. (13-13V.) His Amazon attire is de- 
scribed. He becomes Cleophila. 

14.V. Pyrocles meets Dametas. 

17. Is taken to the Duke, who falls in love. 

19V. Musidorus, already in love with Pamela, 
and disguised as shepherd, sings a love-plaint. 

20. Sidney (not Mus.) explains that Mus. has 
fallen in love with Pamela. 

23. The lion and the bear. 

27. " Here endes the ffirste Book or Acte." 

28. " Here begins The First Eglogues." 

33. (Part of First Eclogues). The shepherd 



472 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Histor relates how he has heard the complaint 
of " an Iberian nobleman called Plangus (vttered 
to the wyse shepherde Boulon) " : Plangus had 
lodged with Histor and had told his story. (The 
story is that of Erona, daughter of a " Kinge of 
Lidia," of her father, and of Antiphilus (33V.), 
whom she would have married after her father's 
death; of an attack made upon her by King 
Otones, who wished her for himself ; of his sister 
Artaxia, who accompanied his army and sought 
to mollify him, but in vain; and of how he be- 
sieged Erona. At that time there landed in Lidia 
the two Princes Pyrocles and Musidorus (34), 
who rescued her, killed Otones, and rescued 
Antiphilus. 

34V. Artaxia inconsolable for loss of her 
brother. Antiphilus makes overtures to her, and 
is taken in an ambush and killed. Erona is im- 
prisoned; if not rescued within two years by 
Pyrocles and Musidorus she is to be burned at 
the stake. 

35-43. Plangus seeks rescue. 

43V. The Second Booke or Acte. 

66. "Here endes the Second Booke or Acte." 

66v. "Here Begin the Second Eglogues." 

72-74V. (Part of Second Eclogues). Histor 
sings the plaint that he overheard Plangus make 
to Boulon: "Alas how longe this pilgrimage 
dothe last." 

76. Histor relates to Pamela the adventures of 
the Princes after they left Erona. A giant in 
Paphlagonia, by means of a dragon, levied tribute 
consisting of girls and young men. Pyrocles and 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 473 

Musidorus offered themselves and killed both 
dragon and giant. (75v.) Next they arbitrated 
a dispute between two brothers concerning the 
throne of Syria. 

76. One brother they caused to marry the 
heiress of Paphlagonia. Next "the great Lady 
of Palestina, called Andromana," sought their aid 
against an Arabian prince, and then fell in love 
with Pyrocles and Musidorus. (76V.) She im- 
prisoned them; but when the Arabian prince 
thereupon bade fair to conquer the country, the 
people released them. Later Andromana mar- 
ried an applemonger! The Princes went into 
Egypt. 

77. Near the City of Memphis, they rescued 
Thermuthis from villains who were about to 
murder him. He was servant to Amasis, Prince 
of Egypt, and told his master's story : 

" Amasis, sonne and heyre to Sesostris, Kinge 
of Egipt" was pledged in love to Artaxia, but 
was solicited by his young stepmother (not 
named) who being rejected began to hate him 
(7yv.) , and plotted to ruin him. She feigned 
love to Thermuthis, Amasis's servant, whom she 
corrupted; and then began to accuse Amasis to 
his father, as having attempted her chastity. 
Further, she procured Thermuthis to disguise 
himself as the Prince, and be ready to murder 
the King. But when she would have had him 
apprehended, he fled, was pursued (78), and 
found by Pyrocles and Musidorus as aforesaid. 
Meanwhile Amasis had been by his father's or- 
ders set adrift in a ship on the Red Sea. Pyrocles 



474 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

and Musidorus rescued him and got Thermuthis 
to tell his story to Sesostris, who restored Amasis 
to favor. The guilty stepmother killed herself. 

79V. So much did Histor tell of Plangus's ac- 
count of the adventures of Pyrocles and Musi- 
dorus. Basilius cut him short in their praises, 
fearing lest Cleophila should be kindled thereby 
with love for Pyrocles! So he called Philisides 
to sing. The remainder of the Second Eclogue 
contains no further narrative. 

82. "Here ende the Second Eglogues and 
Second Booke." 

82V. "The Thirde Booke or Acre": "Cleo- 
phila . . . went to the same place, where first 
shee had reveyled unto hym (Musidorus) her in- 
closed passyon, and was by hym as you may 
remember with a fTrendly sharpenes reprehended. 
There sitting downe amongst the sweete flowers 
wherof that contry was very plentyfull, and in 
the pleasant shade of a Brodeleaved Sicamor, 
they recoumpted one to another theyre straunge 
pilgrimage of passyons, omitting no thinge w ch 
th r open harted friendship ys wonte to lay forth," 
etc. 

Ed. 1627, p. 347 (after the gap) : 

"After that Basilius (according to the Oracles 
promise) had receiued home his daughters, and 
settled himself again in his solitary course & 
accustomed company, there passed not many 
daies ere the now fully recomforted Dorus hav- 
ing waited a time of Zelmanes walking alone 
towards her little Arbor, took leave of his master 
Dametas' husbandry to follow her. Neare 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 475 

whereunto ouertaking her, and sitting downe to- 
gether among the sweet flowers whereof that 
place was very plentifull, vnder the pleasant 
shade of a broad-leaued Sycamor, they re- 
counted," etc. 

[This is the point of junction between the 
Old and the New Arcadia.] 

121. "The Third Eglogues." 

13OV. " Here ende the Thirde Booke and Third 
Eglogues." (Contain no narrative matter — 
either episodes or earlier history of Princes.) 

131-166. "The Fourth Booke or Acte." Cor- 
responds, at beginning — with slight changes — 
and at ending, with Fourth Book in ed. 1627). 

166. "The Ende of the Fourthe Booke." 

i66v. " Here Begin the Fourthe Eglogues." 

1 77V. "Here ende the Fourth Eglogues, and 
the Fourthe Booke or Acte." 

The Fourth Eglogues contain no episodes, or 
early history of Pyrocles and Musidorus; but 
contain autobiographical passage about Philisides 
(transcribed by Dobell, p. 91-93). Fourth Book 
corresponds to Fourth Book of 1627. 

178-216. "The Ffifte and Last Booke or 
Acte." (Begins and ends at same points as Bk. 
Five of 1627. Begins : " The dangerous division 
of mens mindes " ; ends : " Wherewith myne is 
allready dulled.") 

216. But the list of unfinished episodes left to 
another pen to complete differs, in that the MS 
omits Helen and Amphialus and mentions Amasis 
and Artaxia. Thus : 

"But the solempnityes of the Marriages with 



476 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

the Arcadian pastoralls full of many Comicall 
adventures happening to those Rurall Lovers, 
the strange story of the fay re Queen Artaxia of 
Persia and Erona of Lydia with the Prince Plan- 
gus wonderfull chaunces whome the later had 
sent to Pyrocles, and the extreme affection 
Amasis Kinge of Egipt bare unto the former: 
the Sheperdish Loves of Menalcas with Kalo- 
dulus daughter," etc. 

(So also Ashburnham MS ad fin.) 



APPENDIX C 

Bibliographical Notes on Wm. Burton's 
Translation of Achilles Tatius 

The following account is reprinted from the 
(London) Times Weekly Edition Literary Sup- 
plement for Friday, February 10, 1905. 

An Elizabethan Discovery 

Mr. R. A. Peddie writes to us from St. Bride 
Foundation, Bride-lane, E.C., announcing a dis- 
covery of much interest to bibliographers which 
he has recently made — a copy, namely, of a hither- 
to uncatalogued and undescribed Elizabethan 
translation of Achilles Tatius. 

Of the earliest specimens of Greek fiction little 
is known save from lexical works such as the 
Bibliotheca of Photius. Among the earliest 
specimens are the " Erotica " of Achilles Tatius, 
who is generally supposed to have been a con- 
temporary of the shadowy Musaeus, inspirer of 
Marlowe's immortal lay of " Hero and Leander." 
From the somewhat conjectural authority of the 
Dictionary of Suidas we gather that Tatius was 
an Alexandrian Greek and a highly renowned 
rhetorician. Originally a pagan, he eventually 
became a Christian and a Bishop. The romance 
by which he is known bears no kind of episcopal 
impress. On the contrary, the improbable story 
that Heliodorus was obliged to choose between 
477 



478 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

recalling his " Aethiopica " or resigning his see 
would be much more applicable to Tatius and his 
erotic fable. Modelled upon the "Theagenes 
and Chariclea" of Heliodorus, with many sug- 
gestions from Plato, the tale of Clitophon and his 
Leucippe was manifestly designed to air the 
graces of a consummate rhetorician. This is 
clearly shown in the opening scene (suggested, 
perhaps, by descriptions in the " Amores " and 
"Imagines" of Lucian), in which the narrator 
is introduced to us admiring a picture of the 
rape of Europa in the Temple of Venus at Sidon, 
and thinking his impressions aloud, when he is 
suddenly addressed by a young Phoenician 
named Clitophon, who tells the sympathetic con- 
noisseur a long-drawn story of tangled love 
(ja Kara Aev/cnrir^v real K.\eiTO<j)(ovTa) . The 
story is a tedious, and in all respects mediocre, 
patchwork, as compared, for instance, with the 
work of Heliodorus or Longus; but the diction 
and style are accounted excellent, and the de- 
scriptions have received the compliment of innu- 
merable imitations. The work was highly popu- 
lar, and was multiplied regularly during the 
Middle Ages. The first critical edition, however, 
was that undertaken by Jerome Commelinus, and 
printed at Heidelberg in 1601, together with the 
" Daphnis and Chloe " of Longus ; but a much 
superior edition, based upon fresh collations, was 
that undertaken by Milton's enemy, Salmasius, 
and printed by Heger, with a charming frontis- 
piece, at Ley den in 1640 — this edition is still in 
demand, though it is eclipsed in completeness by 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 479 

the Leipzig issue of 1776 with Boden's notes, and 
by the volume in Didot's " Erotici Scriptores," 
1856, in which the ancient Latin translation of 
Annibal della Croce (originally printed by Gry- 
phius at Lyons in 1544) was retouched by Hir- 
schig. A French translation by Claude Colet goes 
back as far as 1545. The earliest complete 
Italian version that we have seen is that of 
Coccio, Venice, 1560, though a substantial frag- 
ment had been rendered by Ludovico Dolce in 
1547. The French took most kindly to the tale 
and translated it again and again. The most 
recherche edition is that of Jean Baudoin, the 
translator of Sidney, with a delicious frontispiece 
by Abraham Bosse (Paris, 1635), a book which 
we can feel morally certain was in the library 
of the author of " Manon Lescaut." The Eng- 
lish version commonly referred to is that of 
Anthony Hodges "The Loves of Clitophon and 
Leucippe; A most elegant History written in 
Greeke by Achilles Tatius : and now Englished " 
(Oxford, 1638). The previous translation of 
Burton seems to have been entirely ignored by 
the friends of the 1638 translator (including the 
poet Richard Lovelace), who prefix glowing com- 
mendatory verses to his sufficiently agreeable and 
idiomatic performance. This emphasizes the in- 
terest of Mr. Peddie's discovery, and gives rise 
to the suspicion that episcopal activity may have 
suppressed the original version. The year 1597 
was the identical one in which the Archbishop 
caused the " Amores " of Marlowe to be publicly 
burnt. 



480 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Mr. Peddie's letter is as follows: 

"The first English translation of Achilles 
Tatius is one of those books of which every one 
has heard, but which no one appears to have seen. 
No bibliographer gives a description of the work 
which even suggests that he had seen a copy. 
The entry in the Stationers' Registers (Arber, 
III. 81), is as follows: 

"Vto Aprilis [1597] Thomas Creede Entred for 
his copie vnder th[e h]andes of master Barlowe and 
master warden Dawson a booke entituled ' The most 
delectable and plesant historye of Clitophon and 
Leucippe,' written in Greeke, by Achilles Stacius 
and Alexandrian, and nowe newlie translated into 
Englishe by W. B. . . . vjd. 

"The W. B. given as the translator was Wil- 
liam Burton (1575-1645), author of the ' De- 
scription of Leicestershire,' and elder brother of 
Robert Burton, author of the ' Anatomy of Mel- 
ancholy.' Mr. A. H. Bullen, in his article on 
William Burton, in the 'Dictionary of National 
Biography,' Vol. 8, p. 18, says : 

"In his manuscript ' Antiquitates de Lindley* (an 
epitome of which is given in Nichols's ' Leicester- 
shire,' IV. 651-6) he states that on applying himself 
to the study of law he still continued to cultivate 
literature, and he mentions that he wrote in 1596 
an unpublished Latin comedy ' De Amoribus Per- 
inthii et Tyanthes,' and in 1597 a translation (also 
unpublished) of 'Achilles Tatius.' 

"The last statement is altogether unfounded, 
as will be seen from the following passage from 
the MS. mentioned: 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 48 1 

"... Anno sequenti transtulit in linguam ver- 
naculam historiam Achillis Statii de Amoribus Cli- 
tophontis et Leucippes impressam Londini 1597, 
per Thomam Creede." Nichols's " Leicestershire," 
IV. 653. 

" I have been fortunate enough to discover a 
copy of this exceedingly rare Tudor translation 
in the library of Mr. A. T. Porter. He acquired 
it in 1897 from the debris of an old library be- 
lieved to come from the neighborhood of Win- 
chester. The copy, unfortunately, is not perfect 
— wanting three leaves — but, otherwise, it is in 
good condition. The collation is A-U. 4. It 
may be described as follows: A. i. [? blank] 
wanting. A. ii [Title] wanting. A. iii. Dedica- 
tion ' To the Right Honourable Henry Wriothes- 
ley, Earle of Southampton, and Baron of Titch- 
field, W. B. wisheth continuance of health, with 
prosperous estate and felicitie.' The Dedication 
continues on the verso, and is signed 'Your 
Honours in all dutie: W. B.' A. iv "To the 
Curteous Reader.' An address. Signed 'Your 
friend, W.B.' B. i The text. U. iv is wanting, 
and no doubt is the only leaf wanting at the 
end. 

"The book adds another to the list of those 
dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of 
Southampton (1 573-1624). Mr. Sidney Lee, in 
his article on Wriothesley, in the " Dictionary of 
National Biography," gives the names of several, 
but does not mention this one. Wriothesley gave 
a collection of books to St. John's College, Cam- 
bridge. Is it possible there may be a copy of the 
Clitophon and Leucippe amongst them ? " 



482 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

The suggestion that the older translation may 
be in the St. John's College Library is not con- 
firmed by Cowie's " Catalogue," nor is there a 
copy in the library at Britwell. 



To this I may add, from an examination of 
the volume (August 20, 19 10), that the text on 
B 1 recto begins: "The first Booke of Achilles 
Statius, of the loue of Clitiphon and Leucippe " ; 
that the running title is : "A most pleasant His- 
toric of Clitiphon and Leucippe"; and that the 
text ends on U 3 verso with the words: "And 
as shee was a virgin when he tooke her away: 
so he suffered her to continue as before he 
had promised: but hee himselfe in handling 

[catchzvord] many " 
The story is thus brought within a paragraph of 
its close; so that, as Mr. Peddie says, not more 
than one leaf can there be wanting. 

The Librarian of St. John's College, as I am 
informed by Mr. Porter, reports, after a search, 
that no copy of this volume exists in the College 
Library. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

A. = Amyot. 

Achilles Tatius. Clitophon and Leucippe. 
Greek text in Scriptores Erotici, q. v. 

Achillis Tatii Alexandrini de Leucippes et 
Clitophontis Amoribus Libri Octo. Tex- 
tum . . . recensuit . . . Friedericus 
Iacobs. . . . Lipsiae, In Bibliopolio Dy- 
kiano, MDCCCXXI. 

Amorosi Ragionamenti, dialogo, nel quale si 
racconta un compassionevole amore di 
due amanti, tradotto per M. Lodovico 
Dolce da i fragmenti d'uno antico scrittor 
greco. Vinegia, Gabriel Giolito de' Fer- 
rari, 1546. 

The most delectable and plesant historye of 
Clitophon and Leucippe . . . nowe newlie 
translated into Englishe by W. B. [= 
William Burton.] [1597.] (See pp. 
246-7, and Appendix C.) 

The Loves of Clitophon and Leucippe. A 
most elegant History, written in Greeke 
by Achilles Tatius: And now Englished 
. . . Oxford . . . 1638. [Translated by 
A. H. = Anthony Hodges.] 
Adams, Joseph Quincy, Jr. Greene's " Mena- 
phon " and " The Thracian Wonder." In 
Modern Philology, III. 317-325 (January, 
1906). 

Thomas Forde's Love's Labyrinth. In 
Studies in Language and Literature in 
483 



484 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Celebration of the Seventieth Birthday of 
James Morgan Hart. New York, 1910. 
Pp. 1-42 ; esp. pp. 29 ff". 

Addison, Joseph. " Notes " on his translations 
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Aelian. De Natura Animalium; Varia His- 
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iEth. = yEthiopica. See Heliodorus. 

Allgemeine Encyklopadie der Wissenschaften 
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Amyot. See Heliodorus and Longus. 

Anacreon. Anacreontis Teii quae vocantur 
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Anthologia Graeca . . . Palatina cum Planudea. 
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Antonius Diogenes. The Marvels beyond 
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Arc. = Arcadia. See Sidney. 

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A. T. = Achilles Tatius. 

Athenae Oxonienses ... by Anthony A Wood. 
... A new edition, with additions, and a 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 485 

continuation by Philip Bliss. 5 vols. 

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Athis et Prophilias. Sagan om Athis och Pro- 

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Chariton. Chaereas and Callirrhoe. See 
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Chassang, A. Histoire du Roman et de ses 
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ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 4^7 

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Clitophon and Leucippe. See Achilles Tatius. 

Colonna, Francesco. See Hypnerotomachia 
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Constantinus Manasses. Text not in Scrip- 
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Croiset, Alfred and Maurice. Histoire de la 
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D. = Didot text. See Scriptores Erotici. 

Da = Angel Day's version of Daphnis and 
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D & C = Daphnis and Chloe. 

Daphnis and Chloe. See Longus. 

Day. See Longus. 

Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. by Sir 
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Diels, Hermann. Die Fragmente der Vor- 
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488 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

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Dunlop, John Colin. History of Prose Fic- 
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Elworthy, Frederic Thomas. The Evil Eye. 
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Elyot, Sir Thomas. The Boke named The 
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Erotici Scriptores Graeci, recensuit R. Hercher. 
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Ersch und Gruber. See Allgemeine Encyklo- 
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Eustathius Makrembolites. Hysminias and 
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Galerie de Florence, La. Tableaux, Statues, 
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49° THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Gesta Romanorum, [herausgegeben] von Her- 
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Goldsmith, Oliver. The Story of Alcander and 
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Grasse, Jean George Theodore. Tresor de 
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ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 49 1 

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492 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

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L'Histoire Aethiopique de Heliodorus, con- 
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494 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

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Landau, Dr. Marcus, Pie Quellen des Deka- 



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496 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

the praises of a most peerlesse Princesse, 
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33 



49^ THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

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500 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

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Reinach, Salomon. Pierres Gravees des col- 
lections Marlborough et d'Orleans, des re- 
cueils d'Eckhel, Gori, Levesque de Gra- 
velle, Mariette, Millin, Stosch, reunies et 
reeditees avec un texte nouveau. Paris, 
1895. (138 Plates.) 

Richardson, Samuel. Works. Ed. Leslie 
Stephen. 12 vols. London, 1883. 

Rohde, Erwin. Der Griechische Roman und 
seine Vorlaufer. Zweite . . . Auflage. 
Leipzig, 1900. 

Saintsbury, George. History of Criticism and 
Literary Taste in Europe. 3 vols. Edin- 
burgh, 1900-04. 

Salverte, Francois de. Le Roman dans la 
Grece Ancienne. Paris, 1894. 

Sandys, John Edwin. A History of Classical 
Scholarship. 3 vols. Cambridge, 1903-08. 

Ste. Beuve, C.-A. fitude sur Virgile. Suivie 
d'une fitude sur Quintus de Smyrne. 
Paris, 1891. 

Schwartz, Eduard. Fiinf Vortrage iiber den 
griechischen Roman. Berlin, 1896. 

Scott, Mary Augusta. Elizabethan Transla- 
tions from the Italian; the titles of such 
works now first collected and arranged, 
with annotations. In Publications of the 
Modern Language Association of Amer- 



502 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

ica. Vol. X, pp. 249-293; XI, 377-484; 

xiii, 42-153; xiv, 465-571. 

Scriptores Erotici. Pub. Didot, Paris, 1856. 
Greek texts and Latin translations. Ed. 
Hirschig, LeBas, Lapaume, and Bois- 
sonade. [Contains Achilles Tatius; An- 
tonius Diogenes; Apollonius Tyrius; 
Chariton Aphrodisiensis ; Eustathius Ma- 
krembolites ; Heliodorus ; Iamblichus ; 
Longus ; Nicetas Eugenianus ; Parthenius ; 
Xenophon Ephesius.] 

Shakespeare, William. Works. Ed. by Wil- 
liam Aldis Wright. 9 vols. London and 
New York, 1894 (Macmillan). (The 
Cambridge Shakespeare.) 
Works. Ed. with introduction and notes by 
C. H. Herford. 10 vols. London and 
New York, 1899 (Macmillan). (Evers- 
ley Edition.) 

Sidney, Sir Philip. An Apologie for Poetrie. 
Ed. J. Churton Collins. Oxford, 1907. 
The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia: the 
" Clifford " and the "Ashburnham " MSS. 
(See p. 345 and Appendix B.) 
The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia. Ori- 
ginal quarto of 1590 in photographic fac- 
simile. Ed. by H. Oskar Sommer. Lon- 
don, 1 89 1. 
The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia . . . now 
the sixt time published, with some new 
additions ; also a supplement of a defect in 
the third part ... by Sir W. Alexander, 
and a sixth booke ... by Richard Beling. 
[Folio.] London, 1627. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 503 

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. With 
the additions of Sir William Alexander 
and Richard Beling, . . . and an Intro- 
duction by Ernest A. Baker. London and 
New York [n. d. Introduction dated 
1907]. 
Spenser, Edmund. The Complete Works. Ed. 
... by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, in 
association with others. 10 vols. Printed 
for the Spenser Society [London]. 1882- 

84. 

Stationers' Register. A Transcript of the Regis- 
ters of the Company of Stationers of 
London, 1554-1640 A. D. Ed. by Edward 
Arber. 5 vols. London, 1875-94. 

Stravoskiadis, Andreas. Achilles Tatius ein 
Nachahmer des Plato, Aristoteles, Plu- 
tarch und Aelian. Athen, 1889. 

Susemihl, Franz. Geschichte der griechischen 
Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit. 2 
vols. Leipzig, 1891-92. 

T. & C. = Theagenes and Chariclea. 

Tasso, Torquato. Opere, Ed. Gio. Rosini. 33 
vols. Pisa, 1821-32. 

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. The Works of Al- 
fred, Lord Tennyson, ed. by Hallam, Lord 
Tennyson. 6 vols. New York, 1908. 
(Eversley Edition.) 

Thaun, Philippe de. Le Bestiaire. Ed. 
Emanuel Walberg. Lund, 1900. 

Theagenes and Chariclea. See Heliodorus. 

Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, rendered into 
English Prose with an Introductory 



504 THE GREEK ROMANCES IN 

Essay by A. Lang. London and New 
York, 1892 (Golden Treasury Series). 
And see Bucolici Graeci. 

Theodorus Prodromus. Text not in Scrip- 
tores Erotici (Didot), but in Erotici Scrip- 
tores (Teubner), q. v. 

Thomas de Cantimpre (Thomas Cantimpra- 
tensis). De Proprietatibus Apum. Lib. 
II, cap. 19 : " De mutua et vera amicitia." 
(Summary in W. Grimm, Kleinere Schrif- 
ten, III. 353-40 

Tuchert, Aloys. Racine und Heliodor. Zwei- 
briicken, 1889. 

TJ. = Underdowne. 

Underdowne. See Heliodorus. 

Wagner, C. P. The Sources of " El Cavallero 
Cifar." In Revue Hispanique, X (1903), 
p. 4 ft; pp. 80-82. 

Walden, J. W. H. Stage Terms in Heliodorus's 
Aethiopica. In Harvard Studies in Clas- 
sical Philology, 1894. Vol. V, pp. 1-43. 

Ward, H. L. D. Catalogue of Romances in the 
Department of Manuscripts in the British 
Museum. London, 1883. (On"Athiset 
Prophilias ", pp. 173, 929.) 

Warner, William. Albions England. In 
Chalmers, English Poets, 1810, Vol. IV, 
pp. 498-658. 

Warren, F. M. A History of the Novel 
previous to the 17th Century. New York, 
1895 (Holt). 

Whibley. See Heliodorus, An Aethiopian 
Historie. 



ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION 5°5 

Wickhoff, Franz. Venezianische Bilder. In 
Jahrb. d. Kgl. preussischen Kunstver- 
sammlnngen, 1902. Vol. 23, pp. 1 18-123. 

Wilson, John Dover. Euphues and the Prod- 
igal Son. In The Library, New Series, 
X, 337-361 (October, 1909). 

Wolff, Samuel Lee. Robert Greene and the 
Italian Renaissance. In Englische Stu- 
dies xxxvii, 321-374. 

Scott's "Ivanhoe" and Sidney's "Arcadia." 
(See The Nation, vol. 92, pp. 7, 60, 114. 
New York, Jan. 5, Jan. 19, Feb. 2, 191 1.) 

A Source of "Euphues. The Anatomy of 
Wyt." In Modern Philology, VII, 577- 
585 (April, 1910). 
Wyttenbach, Daniel Albert. Bibhotheca 
Critica. 3 vols. Amstelodami, 1779- 
1808. (In 12 Partes, at first issued sepa- 
rately. Pars II, containing at p. 57-8 the 
remarks quoted ante, p. 157, is dated 

J 777-) „ . ^ . . 

Xenophon of Ephesus. See Scnptores brotici. 



INDEX. 



Achilles Tatius, I, 7, 9; Cli- 
tophon and Leucippe, edi- 
tions and translations, 9, 
245-247, 375. 477-482; An- 
alysis, 43-110 

Plot controlled by Fortune, 
117-119, 126, 137; hieratic 
or providential activity at 
minimum, 117; Virtu vs. 
Fortuna, 120; absence of 
pastoral, 122 

Character distorted, 117- 
119; mendacious, 142; dis- 
placed by rhetorical display 
of sentimentality, 144-146; of 
Clitophon, 146-149; low char- 
acters from Comedy: Satyrus, 
Clio, Sosthenes, Thersander, 
149-150; Leucippe, 152-153; 
Melitta, 154-157. Disregards 
moral connections between 
character, action, and conse- 
quences, 138; love sensual, 
128; scarcely dignified by a 
superficial chastity, 128-130; 
but chivalrous in episodic 
novella of Callisthenes and 
Calligone, 132; artes amandi, 
136. Humor: high comedy, 
154-155; affinity to realism, 
157, 160; comic genre- 
scenes, 161; generally, in- 
herent in situation, 162 

Setting, historical, vague, 
163; geographical, non-essen- 
tial, generally lacks local color, 
and employed to instruct or 
entertain, but occasionally 
produces real background, 
164, 166, 167; descriptive, is 
rhetorical show-piece, 169- 
171; Europa, painting of, 
171-173; irrelevancy of word- 
paintings, 173-176; excep- 
tions have broader range of 



imagery and form part of 
narrative, 174-175 

Theatrical conception and 
terminology, 183 n. 55. Lack 
of spirituality, 190-191. Spec- 
tacular heroics, 190-191 

Narrative structure, 199- 
210: narration by hero, 199; 
who inconsistently assumes 
omniscience, 199-200; dra- 
matic choice of persons to 
convey information, 200; 
time-arrangement chronolog- 
ical, free from epic conven- 
tions, and detailed, 200-201; 
suspense, 201, 202; irrele- 
vancies, 201-210: of Plot, 
202-206; of Characterization, 
206; of Setting, 206-207; of 
Science and Pseudo-Science, 
207-210 

Paradox, 211-212. Irony, 
216-217. Antithesis: Bridal 
and Burial, 218; Land and 
Water, 219; Fire and Water, 
218 n. 79; Living Tomb, 220; 
artificial and largely verbal, 
221-235: Rivalry, 227-228; 
Conflicting Emotions, 228- 
229; Balance, 229-231; Home- 
ophony, 231-233 

Style highly artificial, 222 
n. 81; artificially simple, 232 
n. 86 

Adams, Joseph Quincy, Jr., 
442 n. 66 

Addison, Joseph, 170 n. 39, 172 
n. 44 

Aelian, 1, 170, 357 n. 35, 380 
n. 21, 384 n. 28, 415 

Albani, 172 n. 45 

Alexandrianism, 2-4, 7 

Alliteration, 5, 231-233, Z77" 
379. 380-381 



506 



INDEX 



5°7 



Amadis of Gaul. 311 n. 3. 3*8- 

319. 344 
Amorous Woman, 133; Arsace, 
Demaeneta, Melitta, 1545 
Arsace, 3" J Arsace, De- 
maeneta, Andromana, 313- 
314, 348-349. 473-474; Me- 
litta, Gynecia, 314; Arsace, 
Demaeneta, etc., 412 
Amyot, Jacques, translation 
of AZthiopica, 8, 237-238. 
Translation of Daphnis and 
Chloe, 8, 237, 239; compared 
with Day's version, 240-245, 
465-469; compared with ori- 
ginal, and with Day, Pan- 
dosto, and Winter's Tale 
(Table), 448-450 
Anacreon, 172 
Anaxagoras, 4 n. 3 
Animal Mother suckles human 
infant; human mother suckles 
animal infant: (Longus, Boc- 
caccio, Greene) 371-372; 
(Longus, Greene) 448 
(Table), 454 
Anthology, Greek, 143 n. 25 
Antiochus and Stratonice, 416 
Antithesis, 5, 7. 140-141. *44~ 
146, 153. *56, 212, 242, 245. 
357-366, 398-399, 437-438, 
450 n. 68, 457. 460 

Banquet and Battle, 212, 
213, 360, 366 additional 
note. Captor servant to 
captive, 212, 214, 361-362. 
Native land more dangerous 
than foreign lands, 213, 415. 
444. Confession of murder 
of person still alive, 217, 3* 7. 
319, 320, 406, 419- Bridal 
and Burial, 217-218, 221, 250 
n. 3. Land and Water, 218- 
220, 221, 359- Water and 
Fire, 218 n. 79. 359"36o, 398- 
399. Living Tomb, 220, 361 
Artificial and largely ver- 
bal, 221-235: Antithesis 
proper, distinguished from 
oxymoron, 221-222; examples, 
222-229; Rivalry, 227-228, 
377; Conflicting Emotions, 



228-229, 256 n. 3, 335. 363. 
405; Multiple Antithesis, 229; 
Balance in syntax, 222, 229- 
231, 380-381; Homeophony, 

231-233 . _ 

Once genuine expression of 
philosophic dualism, in Greek 
Romances mere artifice, 234 
Virtu and Fortuna, 120 & 
n. 5, 151. 3 26 -328, 377. 386 
& n. 30, 436 n. 60 

Dead men possessors of 
rich sroil (Heliodorus, Sid- 
ney), 358-359 

In ureene, 376-377 '• Wit 
and Will, etc., 377; brought 
about by Fortune, 380-381, 
398-399; brought about by 
Love and Fortune, 437"438 
Antonius Dioeenes, Marvels 
Beyond Thule. or Dinias and 
Dercyllis, 8, 164 n. 36 
'A<t>e\€la, 232 n. 86 

Apollonius of Tyre, 10 n. 1 a 

Apollonius Rhodius, 3 

Aristotle, 1, 5 n. 4, 7. M3. *44. 
188 

Ars Amatoria, 136 

Articulation of Plot, in Lyly's 
Euphues, same as in Tito and 
Gisippo and Athis et ■ Pro- 
philias, and (probably) as in 
lost Greek Romance, 248- 
251, 255-256, 258-261, 458, 
461 

Assonance, 231-233, 378-379 

Athis et Prophilias, 248, 250- 
253. 255-256, 258-261 

Atkins, J. W. H., 442 n. 60 

Background, see Setting 
Balance, Syntactical, 222, 229- 

232, 377-379. 380-381 
Balzac, Honore de, 157 
Banished Nobleman heads Out- 
laws, 310 
Banquet and Battle, see An- 
tithesis 
Batrachomyomachia, 172 
Beaumont and Fletcher, 344 
Belleforest, 246 
Bestiaries, 208, 209 n. 75 



5o8 



INDEX 



Bigot, Charles, 171 n. 41 

Boccaccio, in contact with 
Greek fiction, 248, 370-375. 
De Casibus Virorum Illus- 
trium, 386 n. 30 

Tito and Gisippo (Dec. X. 
8), a source of Lyly's Eu- 
phues, 248-250, 255; derived 
from Athis et Prophilias, 
248, 250-251, 255, 258-261 
(Table), or directly from lost 
Greek Romance, 248, 250, 
252-253, 256; may have sug- 
gested portions of Sidney's 
Arcadia, 364 n. 37 

All the novelle that Greene 
takes from, probably from 
lost Greek Romances, 370-375 : 
Perimedes, first tale, from 
Decam. II. 6, 370-372, 410; 
Perimedes, second tale, from 
Decant. V. 2, 372-373; Tal- 
lies Love, episode of Fabius 
and Terentia, from Decam. 
V. 1, 373-374 

Employs natural causation 
in Decam. II. 6 to bring 
about peripeteia, 388 

And see Animal Mother; 
Articulation of Plot; Fortune; 
Hunt; Straying Animal 

Boileau, 127 n. 9 

Boissier, Gaston, 170 n. 40 

Boissonade, edd. prince, of 
Constantinus Manasses and 
Nicetas Eugenianus, 10 

Bouhours, Dominique, 218 n. 
79, 220 n. 80, 224 n. 82 

Bridal and Burial, see An- 
tithesis 

Brooke, Lord, 344 

Brunet, J. C., 237 n. 3 

Brunhuber, K., 308, 309 n. 2, 
310, 311 n. 3, 313 n. 4, 314 
n. 5, 316 n. 6, 318 n. 7, 328 
"• 13, 330 n. 14, 334 n. 17, 
344 nn. 24, 25, & 26, 413 

Burton, William, translation of 
Achilles Tatius, 9, 246 
247, 477-482 

Callimachus, 3 



Callistratus, 170 

Cambridge History of English 
Literature, 343 n. 22, 442 n. 
66 

Cantimpre, Thomas de, 258- 
261 

Caro, Annibal, 240 

Causation, 4, m. Longus 
discards Fortune in favor 
of, 124-126. In Greene, 
wronged by false attribu- 
tions to Fortune, 381 and n. 
23; discarded in favor of 
Fortune, 388-389; weak sense 
of, 458. In Boccaccio, 388. 
Shakespeare discards For- 
tune in favor of, 453-456 

Cavalier Cifar, El, 258-261 

Character, in Greek Romances, 
degenerates into sentimental- 
ity, 6; causation and, not the 
only motive forces of plot, 
1 1 1 ; less prominent than 
Plot, 137; 138-157: created 
despite romancer's want of 
interest, 138; timorous or de- 
ceitful, because always yield- 
ing to circumstances (For- 
tune) or squirming out of 
them, 138-140; distorted by 
love of paradox, 141; menda- 
cious, 141-143; displaced by 
rhetorical display of senti- 
mentality, 143-146; Clitophon, 
146-149; from Comedy, — Sa- 
tyrus, Clio, Sosthenes, Ther- 
sander, 149-150; Theagenes, 
1 50-151; Chariclea, 1 51-152; 
Leucippe, 152-153; Melitta, 
154-157: Greeks generally 
moderate, barbarians passion- 
ate, 153 n. 30; characteriza- 
tion at its best in Melitta, 
157; suggested by descriptive 
Pathos, 179; in general, to- 
gether with Plot and Setting, 
tends to degenerate into mere 
spectacle, 191; general dearth 
of, 457 

In Achilles Tatius, dis- 
torted by control of Fortune, 
1 1 7-1 18; disconnected from 



INDEX 



509 



consequences of its moral 
choices, 138; mendacious, 
142; displaced by rhetorical 
display of sentimentality, 143- 
146; Clitophon, 146-149; from 
Comedy, — Satyrus, Clio, Sos- 
thenes, Thersander, 149-150; 
Leucippe, 152-153; Melitta, 
1 S4~i57; irrelevancies of 
characterization, 206 

In Heliodorus, timorous or 
deceitful, 139-140; sometimes 
falsely motived, 140-141; 
sometimes displaced by pa- 
thos, 144; Theagenes, 150- 
151; Chariclea, 1 51-152 

In Longus, cowardly, 139; 
mendacious, 141; sometimes 
displaced by rhetorical dis- 
play of sentimentality, 144 

In novella, not profound, 
37o 

In Ly\y' sEuphues, set forth 
as in Tito and Gisippo and 
Athis et Prophilias, and 
(probably) as in lost Greek 
Romance, 249, 251, 258-261 
In Sidney, {q. v.), 314, 
328-330 

In Greene, often shallow 
and unmotived, 370, 429- 
432; rendered inconsistent 
by subjection to Fortune, 
381; set forth by means of 
antithesis, 376-377; drawing 
of, not within Greene's 
powers, 407; weak sense of, 
458; dearth of, as in Greek 
Romance, 457 

Love transforms, 132, 373- 
374, 438 n. 65 

In English novel, finds 
structural frame prepared, in 
part, by Sidney's Arcadia, 
463 
Charadrius, 208-209 
Chariton of Aphrodisias, Chae- 
reas and Callirrhoe, 8, 163 
n. 35 
Chastity, Fortune and, 120 n. 
5; dignifies sensual love, 127. 
In Achilles Tatius, superficial, 



117, 128-130. In Heliodorus, 
genuine, 127-128. In Lon- 
gus, aim not to preserve but 
to lose, 130. In Greene, a 
phase of philogyny, 411. 
Preserved till entry into 
kingdom, end of voyage, or 
fulfilment of oracle, 127, 
309, 424, 432, 445. Vindi- 
cated by trial or ordeal, 128, 
175. 308, 418-423, 426-428, 
446 
Christ, Wilhelm, 8, 133 n. 16, 

198 n. 66 
Chrysocephalus. Macarius, 

compiler of 'PoSwna, 10 
Cicero, 256 n. 3, 386 n. 30 
Cocchi, ed. princ. of Xenophon 

of Ephesus, 8 
Coccio, Angelo, translation of 

Achilles Tatius, 9, 246 
Code of Love, 136 
Collin, Raphael, 131 n. 14, 168 

n- 37 

Colonna, Francesco, Hypnero- 

tomachia Poliphili, 172 n. 45, 

334 n. 17 

Comedy, " New " Attic and 

Roman, low characters from, 

in Achilles Tatius, 149-150. 

Of the Renaissance, 149. 

Achilles Tatius's affinity to, 

155, 157, 160, 183 n. 55, 

200. Realism and, 157-158 

Complication, 195, 198-199, 

349-350 
Comingeois, B., translation of 

Achilles Tatius, 9, 246 
Commelin, Jerome, ed. princ. 

of Achilles Tatius, 9, 246 
Confession of crime not com- 
mitted, 217, 317, 319-320, 
406, 419 
Conflicting Emotions, real, 155; 
device to produce antithesis, 
6, 145, 228-229, 256 n. 3, 
335. 363, 377, 405 
Constantinus Manasses, Arts- 

tander and Callithea, 10 
Coordinate sentence-structure, 

232 n. 86 
Cosmopolitanism, 2, 153 n. 30 



5io 



INDEX 



Couat, Auguste, 3 n. 2 

Courier. Paul Louis, 30 n. 6, 
205 n. 72, 241, 465 n. 1 

Croce, Annibale della, trans- 
lation of Achilles Tatius, 9, 
246 

Croiset, A. and M., 8, 124 
n. 8 

Daniele, Francesco, 240 n. 9 

Dante, 135 n. 20 

Day, Angel, paraphrase , of 
Daphnis and Chloe, 8. 122 
n. 6, 237; critical discussion 
of, 240-245; 375-376, 433- 
434. 447-450 (Table, 448- 
450) ; a direct source of 
Greene's Pandosto, and prob- 
ably a direct source of 
Winter's Tale, 452-455; tex- 
tual notes on relation of, to 
Amyot's version, 465-469 

Debat, 6, 133, 205 n. 72, 369 

De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, 
386 n. 30 

Denouement, brought about by 
arrival of distant (hieratic) 
person as deus ex machina, 
(Heliodorus) 112-113, 116, 
141 n. 23, 183, 309; (Greene's 
Menaphon) 427-428; (Sid- 
ney) 308, 309, 340; by Eros as 
deus ex machina, (Longus) 
121, 122. Paradoxical. (Helio- 
dorus) 140, 213; (Greene), 
419. Theatrical, (Heliodorus) 
182-183; (Greene) 417-418. 
Ensemble-scene, (Helio- 
dorus) 184, 187; (Sidney) 
307, 34o; (Greene) 417-419. 
Retarded, (Heliodorus) 198. 
Charge of abduction leads to, 
(Heliodorus) 213, (Sidney) 
309. Ironical, (Heliodorus) 

215. Balanced against open- 
ing scene, (Heliodorus) 213, 

216. Father condemns child, 
(Heliodorus, Sidney) 309, 
329-330; (Greene) 392, 426- 
427, 441, 445, 451-452- Ar- 
ranged by Providence, (Heli- 
odorus) 182-183, (Sidney) 



322-323. Told in chrono- 
logical order, (Sidney) 352. 
Oratorical, (Sidney) 355, 
(Greene) 418. Brought about 
by Fortune, 387. A vindi- 
cation of chastity; see Chas- 
tity. A trial scene; see Trial- 
scenes. A recognition; see 
Recognition. A restoration 
of children; see Restoration. 
Fulfilment of an oracle; see 
Oracle 
Description, in Greek Romances, 
excess of, 6, 167-168 

In Longus, least offensive, 
168; pictorial treatment of 
incidents, ibid.; wide range 
of sensuous imagery, 168- 
169; moderation, 169; "rich- 
ness in simplicity," ibid. 

In Achilles Tatius, excess 
of, 169-176: a trick of rhet- 
oric, 169-170; pictorial, 170- 
174; Europa, painting of, 
171-173; irrelevancy, 173- 
176; his relevant exceptions 
have broader range of im- 
agery and form part of nar- 
rative, 174-175 

In Heliodorus, 176-191; 
spectacular, and relevant, 
176-177, 181; "pathetic op- 
tics," 177-179, 184, 189; 
" hieratic epiphany," 179- 
180, 188-180: theatrical con- 
ception and terminology, 181- 
184, 189; spectacular en- 
semble-scenes, 184-189, 307, 
340, 402, 417-422 

In Sidney, 334-342. 366: 
imitations of Achilles Tatius, 
334-335', nothing from Lon- 
gus, 335; imprese and Em- 
blems not from Greek Ro- 
mance, 335-337; imitations 
of Heliodorus, — trionfo, 
jewel, horsemanship, 337- 
338; "pathetic optics," 338- 
342, esp. at the trial, a spec- 
tacular ensemble-scene, 340- 
342 



INDEX 



5" 



Greene, deficient in talent 
for, 402-403, 407, 421 

Range of sensuous im- 
agery in, 168-169, 172-176, 
184, 242, 244, 403. And see 
'EK<ppao-is; Setting 

Dickens, Charles, 193, 197 n. 
64 

Digression, 6, 166, 175, 176 n. 
48, 203, 350 n. 32 

Dissimulation, 139-143, 311- 
312, 329, 412 & n. 43, 444 

Dobell, Bertram, 239 n. 6, 344, 
345 

Dolce, Lodovico, translation 
of Achilles Tatius, 9, 246 

" Dolce stil nuovo," 135 n. 20 

Donne, 135 n. 20 

D'Orville, ed. princ. of Chari- 
ton, 8 

Drama, Attic, 4. English, in- 
fluenced by Greek Romance 
through Elizabethan fiction, 
463; see Beaumont and 
Fletcher, Shakespeare. And 
see Comedy; Theatrical con- 
ception; Theatrical terminol- 
ogy; Tragedy 

Dryden, 230 n. 83 

Dunlop, John Colin, 135 n. 19, 
138 n. 21, 187 n. 56, 237 
n. 3 

Dubbio, 6, 133, 205, 369 

Durer, Albrecht, 387 n. 31 

'EK</>pa<ri? 169-170, 171 n. 41, 
177, 232 n. 86, 334, 355, 363, 
366, 393 n. 34, 399-403 
Eloquentia, See Oratory 
Elworthy, F. J., 209 n. 75 
Elyot, Sir Thomas, 258-261 
Emblems, in Greek Romances, 
173 n. 46; in Sidney, 335- 
338; in Greene, 387 n. 31, 
402 and n. 37, 403 
Empedocles, 234 
Ensemble-Scenes, Spectacular, 
See Spectacular Ensemble- 
Scenes 
Enveloping action, Urban, 
frames pastoral, 123, 368, 
432-433. Constituted by ad- 



ventures of author, to whom 
hero tells his tale, 199, 379; 
but not continued after 
hero's narrative, ibid. Con- 
stituted by dubbio or dia- 
logue, 369 

Epic, Heliodorus's affinity to, 
116-117, 157, 192-193; Ital- 
ian romantic, Saracens in, 
153 n. 30. Structure, con- 
ventions of: in medias res, 
192, 200, 351-352; and see 
Narration by Participant 

Epideictic, 169, 354 

Epiphanv. Hieratic, see Hier- 
atic Epiphany 

Episodes, 6, 198, 202-203, 413; 
Fortune's control confined 
to, in Heliodorus, 114-115, 
117; and in Sidney, 325. 
Pastoral as, in urban story, 
123, 368, 432-433- Callis- 
thenes and Calligone, in 
Achilles Tatius, 132, 201, 
374. Cnemon, in Heliodorus, 
133. *93, 201, 313, 319-320, 
416 & n. 48. In Longus, 
well subordinated, 199. Rele- 
vancy or irrelevancy of, 196 
n. 64, 199, 201. In Sidney, 
3 1 1-3 14: the Captivity, 311- 
312; the Paphlagonica, 312- 
313; Plangus and Andro- 
mana, 313-314; in the "Old" 
and in the " New " Arcadia, 
346-349; obscured by involu- 
tion and complexity of nar- 
rative method, 352; place of, 
taken by oratory, 354. In 
Greene: Fabius and Teren- 
tia, in Tullies Loue, 370, 
374 

Eros, controls plot in Longus, 
121; gives it initial impulse 
by means of natural causes, 
125; power of, in Achilles 
Tatius, displayed in the pic- 
ture of Europa, 173 

" Eros-Motiv," 308, 413-414. 
444 

Ethopoieia, 143-145, 169 

Ethos, 143, 144. 148, 157-158 



5" 



INDEX 



Euphuism, 208, 248 n. 1, 256 
n. 3. 354. 367, 375. 377. 457. 
460 

Europa, painting of, 171-173, 
393 n. 34, 399-401, 403 

Eustathius Makrembolites, Hys- 
minias and Hysmine, 10, 173 
n. 46 

Exposure of Child, in Helio- 
dorus, in, 113, 410, 425, 
427-428, 444, 446, 451. In 
Longus, 123, 447-449, 454- 
In Greene, 410, 423, 425, 427- 
428, 431 n. 54, 444, 446, 448- 
451. In Shakespeare, 448, 
452-455 

Fabliau, 149, 156, 157, 416 n. 
48 

Father condemns child, 309, 
329-330, 392, 426-427, 441, 
445, 451-452 

Feast and Fight, see Banquet 
and Battle 

Feuillerat, Albert, 238 n. 5, 
250 n. ia 

Flaubert, Gustave, 157 

Forster, Richard, 171 n. 41 

Fortini, 161 

Fortune, in Greek Romances, 
overemphasized, 4, 6; to- 
gether with Providence, prime 
mover of story, 137-138; 
makes character cowardly or 
deceitful, 138-143; subjec- 
tion to, 157 

In Heliodorus, controlled 
by Providence in main plot, 
111-113, 116, 188; but con- 
trols episodes, 114-115; 116, 
117, 126 

In Achilles Tatius, controls 
main plot, 117; distorts char- 
acter, 117-119, 143, 146; op- 
poses, or co-operates with 
Virtu, 120; very powerful, 
126; moves the drama, 183 
n. 55 

In Longus, almost power- 
less, 123 n. 7, 124, 126, 166 
In Day, greatly overem- 
phasised, 245 



In Sidney, controlled by 
Providence, 308, 322-323, 
328; as a vera causa, rare, 
324-325; and almost exclu- 
sively in episodes, ibid.; 
does not dominate Sidney, 
and is viewed cootly and 
speculatively, 324-325, or as 
facon de parler, 324, 325- 
326, or as a real, though weak, 
antitheton to " Virtue," 326- 
328: Providence subjects For- 
tune to Virtue, 328 

In Boccaccio, evidence of 
derivation of certain stories 
from Greek Romance, 372- 
374 

In Greene (q. v.). 375 J 
used largely as in Achilles 
Tatius, 380-392; used as in 
Heliodorus: 409-411, 422 
(shipwreck, theatrical situa- 
tions) ; under control of the 
gods, 423; exposed child com- 
mitted to, 425, 446, 452; 
used as in Longus, 435-438; 
Fortune in pastoral, 435; 
Fortune and Love, 435-438 

In Shakespeare {Winter's 
Tale), child committed to, 
452; but agency of, largely 
rejected in favor of natural 
causation and human motive, 
453-456 

Blamed for human actions 
and their plain consequences, 
118-119, 137-8, 146, 381 and 
n. 23. Love and, 374, 380, 
435-438, 444. Forbids sus- 
tained plot or characteriza- 
tion, 381. Obscures moral 
connections between charac- 
ter, action, and consequen- 
ces, 137-8. Brings about 
paradoxical situations, 211- 
212, 214-215, 325 n. 10, 357 
& n. 35, 358, 380-381; shares 
this function with Love, 437- 
438. Its prevalence signifi- 
cant of a base view of life 
and literature, 234-235. Lues 
Fortunae, in Day, 245; in 



INDEX 



513 



Greene, 381-384. Tycho- 
mania, in Greene, 381-384, 
457. Brings about theatrical 
situations, 325 n. 10, 355- 
357, 422, 446. Virtti and, 
120 & n. 5, 151, 326-328, 
377, 386 & n. 30, 436 n. 60. 
Nature and, 382, 385 & n. 29. 
Wheel of, 387 n. 31 
Fournival, Richard de, 209 n. 

75 
Frame-tale, 195, 199, 369, 379, 
393. 399- And see Envelop- 
ing Action 
Fraunce, Abraham, 344 
Friends, Two, see Two Friends 
Furtwangler, Adolf, 172 n. 43, 
436 n. 59 

Galerie de Florence, La, 172 n. 

43 

Gambara, Lorenzo, paraphrase 
of Daphnis and Chloe, 8, 239 

Gassmeyer, G. M., 463 n. 1 

Gaulmin, ed. princ. and trans- 
lation of Eustathius Mak- 
rembolites, 9; ed. princ. of 
Theodorus Prodromus, 10 

Genre-scenes, 160-16 1, 175 

Gesta Romanorum, 258-261 

Gil Bias, 161 

Giolito, Gabriele, 246 

Giunta, Filippo, ed. princ. of 
Longus, 9, 240 

Glover, T. R., 170 n. 40 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 253-256, 
258-261 

Gorgias, 7, 218 n. 70, 220, 221, 
359, 361 

Grasse, J. G. T., 237 n. 3 

Greek Romances, general char- 
acteristics, 1-7. Accessibility 
to Elizabethan writers through 
editions and translations, 2, 
8-10 (Table), 237-247, 477- 
482; influence upon English 
literature threefold, 463: (a) 
directly upon Elizabethan fic- 
tion, 461, 463; (b) through 
Elizabethan fiction, upon 
drama {King Lear, Winter's 
Tale, etc.) 463; (c) through 
34 



Elizabethan fiction {Arcadia), 
and through French ro- 
mances, upon later fiction 
(novel) (Richardson, Scott), 
462-464. The romances of 
Heliodorus, Longus, and 
Achilles Tatius, the only ex- 
tant Greek Romances that 
influence Elizabethan prose 
fiction, 7. Chronology, 8-10 
(Table) 

Analyses, 11-iio: AZthio- 
pica, 11-28; Daphnis and 
Chloe, 29-42; Clitophon and 
Leucippe, 43-110 

Plot, 111-137: Activity of 
Providence and of Fortune, 
111-120, 123 n. 7, 126, 188; 
of Human Character or 
Personality {Virtii), 120; of 
Love, 121-122, 127-137; of 
Causation, 124-126; Pastoral 
Element in, 121-124 

Character, degenerates in- 
to sentimentality, 6; causa- 
tion and, not the only mo- 
tive forces in plot, 1 1 1 ; less 
prominent than Plot, 137; 
138-157: created despite ro- 
mancer's want of interest, 
138; timorous or deceitful, 
because either yielding to cir- 
cumstances (Fortune) or 
squirming out of them, 138- 
140; distorted by love of 
paradox, 141; mendacious 
1 41-143; displaced by rhe 
torical display of sentimen 
tality, 143-146; of Clitophon 
146-149; from Comedy, — Sa 
tyrus, Clio, Sosthenes, Ther 
sander, 149-150; of The 
agenes, 1 50-1 5 1 ; of Chariclea 
1 51-152; of Leucippe, 152- 
153; of Melitta, 154-157; of 
Greeks generally moderate, 
of barbarians generally pas- 
sionate, 153 n. 30; drawing 
of, at its best in Melitta, 157 
Humor, 154, 157-162: real- 
ism and, 157-158; Helio- 
dorus's, mostly in episodes, 



5*4 



INDEX 



weak, largely verbal, 158- 
159, 162; Achilles Tatius's, 
realistic, strong, often mas- 
terly, inherent in situation, 
160-162; Longus's, pervasive, 
162 

Setting, 162-192: Histor* 
ical, vague, 163. Geograph- 
ical, vague, 163-164; in Heli- 
odorus and Achilles Tatius 
used mostly to instruct or 
entertain, but occasionally to 
produce real background, 
164-167; in Longus, relevant 
and intrinsically beautiful, 
166-167. Descriptive, excess 
of, a fault of Greek Romance, 
168; least offensive in Lon- 
gus, ibid.; his pictorial treat- 
ment of incidents, ibid.; 
wide range of sensuous 
imagery, 168-169, 242, 244; 
moderation, 169, 199; rich- 
ness in simplicity, 169, 242; 
Achilles Tatius's excess of 
description a rhetorical 
showpiece, 169-171; Europa, 
painting of, 171-173; irrele- 
vancy of word-paintings, 173- 
176; exceptions have broader 
range of imagery and form 
part of narrative, 174-175. 
Heliodorus's spectacles rele- 
vant, 176, 181; almost omits 
Ex^paoris, 177; his "pathetic 
optics," 177-179. 184, 189; 
" hieratic epiphany," 179-180, 
188-189; theatrical concep- 
tion and terminology, 181- 
184, 189; spectacular en- 
semble-scenes, 184-189 

Structure, 192-220: Helio- 
dorus's epic plan, 192; invo- 
lution, 193-194, 198; effects 
of theatrical conception, 194- 
195. 197. 198 n. 67; complica- 
tion, 195, 198; loose threads, 
195; obscure time-arrange- 
ment, 195; irrelevancy, 195- 
196; dramatic retardation, 
suspense, interpolation, 197- 
198. Longus's plain time- 



scheme; lack of involution, 
complication, retardation, or 
suspense; episodes; modera- 
tion; 199. Achilles Tatius's 
story told by hero, 199; who 
inconsistently assumes omnis- 
cience, 199-200; dramatic 
choice of persons to convey in- 
formation, 200; time-arrange- 
ment chronological, free from 
epic conventions, and de- 
tailed, 200-201; suspense, 
201, 202; irrelevancies, 201- 
210: of Plot, 202-206; of 
Characterization, 206; of Set- 
ting, 206-207; of Science 
and Pseudo-Science, 207-210. 
(And see Structure, Narra- 
tive) 

Paradox, 210-221: irrele- 
vancy and, two phases of 
the unexpected, 210; sought 
consciously, 21 1-2 13; irony, 
213-217; antithetical situa- 
tions, 217-221: bridal and 
burial, 217-218; land and 
water, 218-220, 221; water 
and fire, 218 n. 79; living 
tomb, 220 

Style, 217-235: antithesis 
in situation itself, 217-220; 
artificial antithesis, largely 
verbal, 221-235: antithesis 
and oxymoron, 221-229; bal- 
ance, 222, 229-231; home- 
ophony, 231-233; expresses 
base view of life and litera- 
ture, 235. (And see Antithe- 
sis; Rhetoric) 

Spectacular heroics, 190- 
191 

Lack of spirituality, 190- 
191. 235 
Greene, Robert, 172 n. 45, 
239, 240, 247, 367-458: versa- 
tility and timeliness, 367-368, 
375; variety of his sources, 
367-375: Euphues, 367, 369, 
375; Sidney's Arcadia, 367- 
368, 375. 406, 415, 416, 430. 
432, 440, 443-445. 456, 457J 
pastoral, 368, 375. 376, 386 n. 
30; mediaeval survivals, 368- 



INDEX 



5*5 



369. 373 5 novella, 369-375: 
adapted to Greene's powers, 

370. Greene incapable of more 
elaborate forms of plot, 381 
407; borrows from Boc 
caccio novelle which are all 
probably from lost Greek Ro 
mances, 370-375: Decam. II, 
6 {Perimedes, first tale), 370- 
372; Decam. V. 2 {Perimedes 
second tale), 372-373; De 
cam. V. I {Tullies Loue 
episode of Fabius and Ter 
entia), 373~374 

Affinity to Greek Romance 
pastoral tendency, love of 
pure plot, weak sense of mo 
tive and causal nexus, depen 
dence upon Fortune, love o: 
garish stylistic ornament, o: 
ensemble scenes, of oratory 
of pathos and " pathetic op' 
tics," 37s 

Special affinity to Achilles 
Tatius, 376-393: Greene fond 
of antithesis and paradox, 
376-377» 380-381; which are 
his only means of character- 
ization, 376-377; not inter- 
ested in character, 377, 407; 
"conflicting emotions," 
rivalry, " Wit and Will," 
" Virtue and Fortune," etc., 
377; homeophony, 377-379 5 
inconsistencies in frame-tale 
narrated in first person, 379, 
393; fondness for set 
speeches, 379-380. Fortune, 
uses of, 380-392: produces 
antithetical situations, 380- 
381; Greene enslaved to, 375, 
381-384; lues fortunae, or 
tychomania, 381, 384, 407, 
411, 457; incapacitates him 
for sustained plot, or for 
consistent characterization, 
381, 407; credited with 
plain effects of human ac- 
tion, 381; and the "gifts 
of Nature," 382; Fortune as 
a cliche", 382-383; Fortune 
coupled with other agencies 



(Fate, the Gods, etc.) in 
" drag-net " formulae, 383, 
389; Fortune as empty form- 
ula, 383-384; but sometimes 
used imaginatively, as a vera 
causa, ibid.; the mistress 
of the plot, 387-392; sub- 
stituted for B o c c a c c i o's 
natural causes {Decam. II. 
6) to bring about peripeteia 
in Perimedes, first tale, 388- 
389; conducts shipwreck, 
etc., 389-390, 392; ironical, 
389-390; turns to good, 391; 
brings about " moment of 
last suspense " in Pandosto, 
391-392; sometimes used in- 
tellectually, as a subject of 
discussion 384-386: its rela- 
tion to other non-human 
forces (Fate, Providence, 
etc.), 384; relation to man 
(Fortune and Nature, For- 
tune and Virtu), 385-386; 
sometimes personified, 387 & 
n. 31 (Wheel), 401-402 n. 37 
Borrowings from Achilles 
Tatius, 393-408, 457: Ar- 
basto, frame and beginning, 
393-395. 407, 456. Carde of 
Fancie, names, invective 
against women, " the Sicilian 
spring," 395-398; soliloquy, 
tirade, double wedding, 404; 
456. Morando, names, 396; 
picture of Europa, 399-401; 
picture of Andromeda, 402, 

404, 456. But Greene's vis- 
ual imagination too weak to 
be stimulated even by Achil- 
les Tatius, 403, 407, 457. 
Alcida, conflicting emotions, 

405. Pandosto, brutal court- 
ship, 405, 451, 452. Philo- 
mela, commitment to Fortune, 
389, 405; denouement, 405- 
406; 456. Groatsworth, in- 
terchange of fables, 406-407, 
457 

Relations to Heliodorus, 
375, 408-432. 444-446, 451- 
452, 456-457: spectacular en- 



5 i6 



INDEX 



semble-scene3, 375, 376. 402, 

408, 417-422, 446; oratory, 
375. 379-38o, 418; "pathetic 
optics," 375, 419 & n. 50, 445; 
pathos, 375, 417-422, 446; 
suffering heroine, 408, 411- 
412; oracles, 408, 410, 420- 
424, 428, 432, 443-444, 446, 
452, 457; recognition, 408, 
410, 418, 427-428, 445. 452; 
allusions to Theagenes and 
Chariclea, 408-409; astrology, 

409. Heliodorean uses of 
Fortune: Fortune, associated 
with oracle, exposure, & res- 
toration, brings about ship- 
wreck, 410, 444, 451; makes 
theatrical situations, 410-41 1, 
422; under control of the 
gods, 423; exposed child com- 
mitted to, 425, 444, 446. Suf- 
fering and dissembling types 
of character, 411-413; minor 
incidents, 413-417. Major 
borrowings, 417-432: denoue- 
ment of Carde of Fancie, 
417-418; denouement of Tal- 
lies Love, 418; denouement 
of Philomela, 418-419, 456; 
trial-scene in Pandosto, 420- 
422, 446, 452; oracle in Pan- 
dosto and Menaphon, 420- 
424, 428, 432, 443-445, 446; 
exposure, etc., in Pandosto 
and Menaphon, 424-428, 444, 
446, 451; moment of last sus- 
pense, and denouement, in 
Pandosto and Menaphon, 
426-429,445, 452; absurdities 
resulting from blind imita- 
tion of Heliodorus, 428, 430- 
432, 456; influence of Helio- 
dorus structural, 408, 428- 
429, 444, 452, 456 

Relations to Longus, 375, 
432-439. 444. 445. 446-450 
(Table, 448-450), 452-457; 
love of pastoral, 375; em- 
ployment of pastoral as epi- 
sode in urban story, 432-433; 
ridicule of rusticity, 433-434, 
445. Uses of Fortune: For- 



tune and the pastoral, 435; 
Fortune and Love, 435-438, 
444. Direct borrowings, 
(Menaphon) 438-439. (Pan- 
dosto) 446-450, 452-457 

Relations to Shakespeare 
(Winter's Tale, Pandosto); 
see Shakespeare 

Chronological development 
of influence of Greek Ro- 
mances upon, 456-457; small 
effect upon Greene as literary 
artist, 457, 461; insignificant 
contribution of Greek Ro- 
mance to English novel 
through Greene, 457-458; fic- 
tion moving away from no- 
vella, in which Greene was 
skilful, towards romance, 
which he could never com- 
pass, 462; decline of his 
vogue, 462 

Alcida, 377 n. 14, 383 n. 
26, 386 n. 30, 387 n. 31, 389; 
borrowings from Clitophon 
and Leucippe, 398, 405; 409, 
413-414, 436 nn. 60 & 61, 
437 nn. 62 & 64, 438 n. 65 

Arbasto, 368 n. 4, 378 n. 
18, 379, 381 n. 23, 383 n. 25, 
386 n. 30, 387 n. 31; paral- 
leled with Clitophon and 
Leucippe, 393-395 5 date of 
publication, 395, 404; 399, 
407, 409, 411 n. 42, 412 n. 
46, 437 nn. 62 & 64. 456 

Black Bookes Messenger, 
367, 377 n. 15 

Carde of Fancie, 367, 368 
n. 4, 369 n. 5, 373 «• ", 
374 n. 13, 377 n. 14,378,379. 
381 n. 23, 383 n. 25, 384 n. 
28, 385 n. 29, 386 n. 30, 387 
n. 31, 388, 391; borrowings 
from Clitophon and Leucippe, 
395-398, 404; date of publi- 
cation, 395, 404; 411 nn. 41 
& 42, 414, 416-418 & n. 49, 
430 n. 53, 436 nn. 60 & 61, 
437 n. 62, 438 n. 65, 456 

Conny catching, Second 
Part, 386 n. 30 



INDEX 



517 



Connycatching Series, 367 

Debate between Folly and 
Love, 369 n. 7, 416 n. 49, 
437 n. 64 

Disputation between a Hee- 
Connycatcher and a Shee- 
Connycatcher, 381 n. 23 

Euphues his Censure to j 
Philautus, 369 n. 8, 377 n. 
17, 380, 383 n. 25, 384 n. 28, 
385 n. 29, 386 n. 30, 387 n. 
3i, 389. 39o, 412 n. 45, 436 
& n. 60, 437 n. 62 

Farewell to Folly, 369 n. 8, 
377 nn. 15, 16, 380, 384 n. 
27, 38s n. 29, 386 n. 30, 387 
n. 31, 411 n. 42, 434, 43s & 
n. 58 

Francescos Fortunes, 368 
n. 2, 369 n. 10, 377 n. 15, 
385 n. 29, 390, 411 n. 42, 
412 n. 44, 420, 434, 436 n. 
60 

Groatsworth of Wit, 370 
n. 11, 412 n. 44; probable 
borrowing from Achilles Ta- 
tius, 406-407, 457 

Mamillia, 367, 369 n. 6, 
377 n- 15, 383 n. 25, 385 n. 
29, 386 n. 30, 387 n. 31, 408- 

409, 411 n. 42, 412 nn. 44 
& 46, 416 n. 49; motivation, 
429-430 

Menaphon, 368, 376, 384 
nn. 27 & 28, 386 n. 30, 391, 
402 n. 39, 411 n. 42, 414, 
435 & n. 58, 438 n. 65; analy- 
sis, 440-442; relation to Pan- 
dosto, 456; relation to Helio- 
dorus, 410, 412 n. 43, 415, 
419 n. 50, 420 n. 50a, 422- 
428, 444-445, 456; relation to 
Longus, 434-436, (direct bor- 
rowing) 438-439, 444-445 5 
relation to Sidney's Arcadia, 

410, 440, 443-444, 445, 456; 
relation to Warner's Albions 
England, 440, 442-443, 445; 
absurd motivation, structure, 
etc., 430-432, 435, 456 

Mirrour of Modestie, 369 
n. io, 420 



Morando, 369 n. 8, 374 11. 
13, 381 n. 22, 383 n. 26, 384, 
385 n. 29, 386 n. 30, 387 n. 
31, 393 n. 34; date of pub- 
lication, 395, 404; borrow- 
ings from Clitophon and 
Leucippe, 396, 399-402, 404; 
409, 437 n. 62, 438 n. 65, 
456 

Mourning Garment, 369 
nn. 8 & 9, 377 nn. 15 & 16, 

385 n. 29, 386 n. 30, 412 n. 
44, 434, 436 n. 60, 438 n. 65 

Never too Late, 381 n. 23, 

386 n. 30, 398, 411 nn. 41 & 
42, 412 n. 44, 436 n. 60 

Notable Discovery of Coos- 
nage, 377 n. 15 

Orpharion, 369 n. 5, 383 n. 
26, 386 n. 30, 411 n. 42, 436 
n. 60, 437 n. 62, 438 n. 65 

Pandosto, 383 n. 25, 384 n. 
28, 386 n. 30, 387 n. 31, 391- 
392, 414, 431 n. 54, 435 n. 58, 
436 n. 60, 437 n. 62. Con- 
tains Greene's first pastoral, 
433. Source of The Win- 
ter's Tale, 376, 445-446, 
(Table) 448-450; but Shakes- 
peare probably went behind 
Pandosto and directly to 
Day's Daphnis and Chloe, 
for some important material, 
452-455- Employment of 
Fortune, largely rejected by 
Shakespeare, 453-456. Ex- 
hibits with greatest fulness 
the influence of the Greek 
Romances, 376, 432, 456. 
Imitated in Menaphon, 456. 
Relations to Achilles Tatius, 
376, 405, 451, 456. Rela- 
tions to Heliodorus, 410, 411 
& n. 42, 412 n. 46, 420-426, 
446, 451-452, 456. Rela- 
tions to Longus, 433, 435, 
445-450 (Table, 448-450), 
452-457. Motivation, 426 n. 
5i, 454 

Penelopes Web, 369 n. 8, 
379, 381 n. 22, 382 n. 24, 
383 n- 25, 384 n. 28, 386 n. 



5«8 



INDEX 



30, 39°, 411 n. 42, 4" n. 44, 
416 n. 49, 435 n. 58 

Perimedes the Black Smith, 
369 n. 8; first tale, from 
Boccaccio, Decam. II. 6, 
370-372; second tale, from 
Boccaccio, Decam. V. 2, 372- 
373; both of which are prob- 
ably from lost Greek Ro- 
mances, 370-373; 380, 384 n. 
28, 386 n. 30, 387 n. 31, 388- 
389, 390, 410-411, 411 n. 
42, 414, 435 n. 58, 436 n. 60, 
437 n. 62 

Philomela, 368, 377 n. 14, 
380, 381 n. 23, 386 n. 30, 
388, 389, 39o; borrowings 
from Achilles Tatius, 389, 
405-406; from Sidney, 406, 
415; from Heliodorus, 411 
& n. 42, 414-415, 418-420, 
422, 435 n. 58, 436 n. 60, 
437, n. 62, 438 n. 65, 456 

Planetomachia, 369 n. 7, 
378, 381 n. 23, 384 n. 28, 
386 n. 30, 388, 409, 411 n. 
42, 412 nn. 43 & 45, 414, 415- 
416 & n. 49, 430 n. 53, 436, 
437 n- 62 

Quip for an Upstart Court- 
ier, 369 n. 5 
Royal Exchange, 435 
Spanish Masquerado, 386 
n. 30 

Tullies Love, 368 n. 3; 
episode of Fabius and Ter- 
entia from Boccaccio, Decam. 
V. i, which is probably from 
lost Greek Romance, 370, 
373-375; 377 n. 16, 380, 384 
n. 28, 386 n. 30, 414, 418, 
436 n. 60, 437, 438 n. 65 

Vision, 369 n. 5, 370 n. 

11, 385 n. 29, 411 n. 42, 434 

Grimm, Wilhelm, 248, 251-252, 

256 
Grosart, A. B., 395 
Guarini, Pastor Fido, 433 
Guillaume le Clerc, 209 n. 75 

Helbig, Wolfgang, 172 n. 42 
Heliodorus, JEthiopica, 1, 7; 
editions and translations. 



8, 237-239, 375-376. Analy- 
sis, 11-28. Main plot con- 
trolled by Providence, 111- 
117, 126, 188; priests, oracles, 
etc., in, m-113; episodes 
and minor incidents con- 
trolled by Fortune, 113-115. 
Love, sensual, 127; dignified 
by genuine chastity, 127-128; 
still, not a spiritual relation 
so much as an abstention 
from a carnal relation, 128- 

9. Affinity to tragedy and 
epic, 116-117, 157, 181-184, 
189, 192 

Character, often cowardly 
or deceitful, 139-141; falsely 
motived because of love of 
paradox, 141; sometimes dis- 
placed by pathos, 144; of 
Theagenes, 150-151; of 
Chariclea, 1 51-152. Humor, 
mostly in episodes, weak, 
largely verbal, 158-159, 162 

Setting, historical, vague, 
163; geographical, inaccurate 
and non-essential, generally 
lacks local color, and is em- 
ployed to instruct or enter- 
tain, but occasionally pro- 
duces real background, 164- 
167; descriptive, 176-191: 
spectacles relevant, 176, 181; 
almost omits €K<f>pa<ri<;, 177; 
"pathetic optics," 177-179, 
184, 189; "hieratic epiph- 
any," 179-180, 188-189; the- 
atrical conception and ter- 
minology, 181-184, 189; spec- 
tacular ensemble-scenes, 184- 
189; spectacular heroics, 190- 
191; lack of spirituality, 190- 
191 

Narrative structure, 192- 
198: epic plan, 192; compli- 
cation, 195, 198; involution, 
193-194, 198; effects of the- 
atrical conception, 194-195, 
197 & n. 65, 198 n. 67; 
loose threads, 195; obscure 
time-arrangement, ibid., ir- 
relevancy, 195-196, aoi; dra- 



INDEX 



519 



matic retardation, interpola- 
tion, suspense, 197-198 

Pseudo-science, 195, 208- 
209. Paradox, 21 1-2 13. 
Irony, 214-215. Antitheses: 
see Antithesis 

Style, less artificial than 
that of Achilles Tatius or 
Longus, 222 n. 81 

Heptameron, 353 n. 34 

Heraclitus, 234 

Herford, C. H., 432 n. 56 

Herodotus, 7, 415 n. 47 

Heroics, Spectacular, 150, 190- 
191. 315 

Heroine, Suffering, (Helio- 
dorus, Greene) 408, 411-412 

Hieratic Element, in Helio- 
dorus, pervades main plot, 
111-113; 428, 445; in Achil- 
les Tatius, confined to epi- 
sode, 117; in Greene, 422, 
427-428, 445; and see " Hier- 
atic Epiphany " 

" Hieratic Epiphany," 179-180, 
188-189 

Hippocrates, 234 

Hippolytus, 413, 416 

Historic Background, etc. See 
Setting 

" Homeophony," 231-234, 378- 
379 

Homer, 117; Iliad, 7, 158, 170; 
Odyssey, 158, 161, 170, 193 

Horace, 172 

Howard, W. G., 171 n. 41 

Howell, Thomas, 343-344 

Humor, in Greek Romances, 
I54-I5S; 157-162: realism 
and, 157-158; Heliodorus's, 
mostly in episodes, weak, 
largely verbal, 158-159, 162; 
Achilles Tatius's, realistic, 
strong, often masterly, in- 
herent in situation, 160-162; 
Longus's, pervasive, 162; 
Sidney's not influenced by 
Greek Romance, 308, 330- 
334 

Hunt, drives goats (Longus) 
125, 372, (Boccaccio) 371- 
372, 388; motif not in 



Greene, probably borrowed 
directly by Shakespeare 
(Winter's Tale) from Day, 
452-455 
Huon of Bordeaux, 368, 373 
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, see 
Colonna, Francesco 

Iamblichus, Babylonica, or Rho- 
danes and Sinonis, 8, 164 n. 
36, 205 n. 72, 254, 357 n« 36, 
373 

Idyll, 3. 168 n. 37, 244 

Illusion, 191, 408, 464 

Imagery, Sensuous, Range of, 
see Description 

Imprisonment together of lov- 
ers or friends, (Heliodorus, 
Sidney) 3"-3"» (Helio- 
dorus, Greene) 426, 445 

Interpolation, 197, 198, 202, 
350 

Inversion, 193-194. 198-199, 
351-352 

Involution, see Inversion 

Irony, in oracle, 112; as a 
species of paradox, 213-217; 
dramatic, 214; in Heliodorus, 
214-215; in Longus, 215; in 
Achilles Tatius, 216-217; 
omitted by Day, 245; in Sid- 
ney, 321; in Greene, 389- 
39o 

Irrelevancy, 6, 166, 168, 173 n. 
46, 174, 175, i77> 196 n. 64, 
198. In Achilles Tatius, 201- 
210: of Plot, 202-206; of 
Characterization, 206; of Set- 
ting, 206-207; of Science and 
Pseudo-Science, 207-210. Ir- 
relevancy and paradox, two 
phases of the Unexpected, 
210. Significant of a base 
view of life, 234-235. Al- 
most absent in Sidney, 350 n. 
32 

Jacobs, Friedrich, 130 n. 13, 
149 n. 28, 157 n. 32, 197 n « 
65. 237 n. 3, 241 n. 11 

Jacobs, Joseph, 239 n. 7, 241 
nn. 10 & 12 



5 2 ° 



INDEX 



Jahn, Otto, 172 n. 42 
Johannes Secundus, 134 
Jonson, Ben, 134 n. 18, 240 
n. 8 

Kerlin, Robert T., 463 n. 2 
Kiss, worship of, 134-135 
Koeppel, Emil, 344, 370 n. 

11a 
Koerting, H. K. O., 120 n. 4, 

128 n. 10, 237 n. 3 

La Fontaine, 130 n. 12 

Land and Water, see Antithesis 

Landau, Marcus, 251 n. 2, 372 

Lang, Andrew, 6 n. 5, 170 
n. 40 

Lapidaries, 208 

Lauchert, Friedrich, 209 n. 75 

Law, 6, 7, 8, 235, 464 

Lee, A. Collingwood, 251 n. 2 

Lee, Sidney, 377 n. 15 

Lenglet du Fresnoy, Nicolas, 
273 n. 3, 246 nn. 23, 26, 27 

Lessing, 176 

Living Tomb, see Antithesis 

Lodge, Thomas, 239, 247, 433; 
allusions to Heliodorus the 
only evidence of influence of 
Greek Romances, 459-460; 
461 

Longinus, 157-158, 161, 220 

Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, 
7, 8. Editions and transla- 
tions, 8, 239-240, 375-376; 
Amyot's and Day's versions, 
see Amyot; Day. Analysis, 
29-42 

Plot controlled by Eros, 
121; decreed to be a pastoral, 
ibid.; but from urban point 
of view, 122; employs appa- 
ratus of tragedy, ibid.; ridi- 
cules rusticity, ibid.; urban 
"enveloping action," 123; 
pastoral as interlude in urban 
story, ibid.; control of For- 
tune minimized by absence of 
travel and adventure, and by 
control of Eros, 124; sway of 
causation resumed, 124-126. 
Love frankly sensual, 128, 



130; tempered by innocence 
of children and by charm of 
country-life, 130-131; instruc- 
tion in, 136; sophisticated 
treatment of pastoral, 122- 
123; of love, 130-131. Inci- 
dent of the hunt, borrowed 
by Shakespeare, 125, 453- 
455 

Character, cowardly, 139; 
mendacious, 141; partly dis- 
placed by rhetorical display 
of sentimentality, 144. Hu- 
mor, pervasive, 162 

Setting, in time, undefined, 
163; geographical, though 
defined, lacks " local color," 
ibid.; but relevant and in- 
trinsically beautiful, 166-167; 
description, excessive, a fault 
of Greek Romances, least of- 
fensive in Longus, 168; his 
pictorial treatment of inci- 
dents, ibid.; wide range of 
sensuous imagery, 168-169, 
242, 244; moderation, 169, 
199; richness in simplicity, 
169, 242; restraint, 176 

Narrative structure, simple, 
199. Paradox, 211. Irony, 
215. Style, artificial, 222 n. 
81; artificially simple, 232 n. 
86. Theatrical conception and 
terminology, 183 n. 55. Spec- 
tacular heroics, 190-191. 
Lack of spirituality, ibid. 
Love, in Greek Romances, 127- 
137: sensual, but dignified by 
chastity, 127; genuinely in 
Heliodorus, 127-129; super- 
ficially in Achilles Tatius, 
129-130; not at all in Longus, 
130-13 1. A genuine attach- 
ment, emancipating women, 
yet not noble per se, 131-132. 
Anticipations of later treat- 
ment of love, 134-137; the 
Kiss, 134-135; spirit-theory 
and image-theory, 135; code, 
136. In Heliodorus not a 
spiritual relation so much as 
abstention from a sensual 



INDEX 



521 



relation, 128. In Longus, 
love, instead of Fortune, con- 
trols plot, 121, 433-436; 
frankly sensual, 128, 130; to 
be taught to reader, 136. In 
Achilles Tatius, exceptionally 
noble in episode of Callis- 
thenes and Calligone, 132. 
In Greene, closely associated 
with Fortune, 436; like For- 
tune, brings about bizarre 
situations, 437-438; miscel- 
laneous similarities to Greek 
Romance, 438 n. 65. Trans- 
formation of character by, 
132, 373-374, 438 n. 65. Pla- 
tonic love-doctrine, parodied, 
133-134; traces of, 134 n. 17. 
Fortune and, 374, 380, 436- 
438, 444 
Lucian, 170, 172 
" Lues Fortunae" ; see Fortune 
Lyly, John, 239, 247, 248-261: 
Campaspe, Mother Bombie, 
Gallathea, affected by Helio- 
dorus and Achilles Tatius, 
248 n. 1. Style of Euphues 
possibly affected by style of 
Achilles Tatius, 248 n. 1, 
256 "• 3 

Euphues probably derived 
mediately from lost Greek 
Romance, 248-261, 370; de- 
rived directly from Boccac- 
cio's Tito and Gisippo, 248- 
250, 255. Tito and Gisippo 
derived from Athis et Pro- 
philias, 248, 250-251, 255, 
258-261 (Table); or directly 
from lost Greek Romance, 
248, 250, 252-253, 256. Athis 
et Prophilias probably de- 
rived from lost Greek Ro- 
mance, 248, 251-252, 256. 
Goldsmith may have used 
this lost Greek Romance, 
253-256, 258-261 (Table). 
Popularity of Euphues 
shorter-lived than that of 
Arcadia, 462. Allusion to 
Rhodope, 416 n. 49. " Con- 
trarieties," 437 n. 63. Gen- 



eral influence of Greek Ro- 
mance upon, 461. Artic- 
ulation of material in, see 
Articulation of Plot 

Machiavelli, 326, 412, 429 

Maffei, Scipione, 172 n. 45 

Mahaffy, J. P., 170 n. 40 

Marino, 134, 172 n. 45, 224 n. 
82 

Marriage and Death, see An- 
tithesis 

Menendez y Pelayo, Marcelino, 
131 

Milesian Tales, 462 

Misogyny, 133, 162, 333-334, 
396-398, 4" & n- 42 

Moliere, 160 

Moody, William Vaughn, 311 
n. 3, 318 n. 7 

Moschus, 170, 172 

Motivation, falsified by love of 
paradox, 141; perverted, 148; 
of Chariclea, 152 n. 29; of 
Melitta, 155-156; of pre- 
tended fellow-prisoner of 
Clitophon, 156 n. 31. In 
Greene: Menaphon, 425-426, 
428, 430-432; Pandosto, 426 
n. 51, 454; Mamillia, 429-430; 
generally weak, 458 

Muzio, Girolamo, 172 n. 45 

Mystery Plays, 153 n. 30 

Naber, S. A., 164 

Narration by participant, 193- 

194. 199, 349-350, 351, 353, 

379, 393-395 
Nash, Thomas, 247, 335 n. 18, 

367 ; not influenced by Greek 

Romances, 459, 461 
Nicetas Eugenianus, Charicles 

and Drosilla, 10 
Nicolaus Pergamenus, 258-261 
Ninus- fragment, 8, 163 n. 65 
Nonnus, 172 
Norden, Eduard, 218 n. 79, 220 

n. 80, 222 n. 81, 234 n. 87 
Novel, English, receives from 

Greek Romances nothing 

through Greene, 457-458 
English fiction develops to- 



522 



INDEX 



wards, away from novella, 
by way of romance, 462; sus- 
tained complex form of, may 
be partly the gift of Greek 
Romance, by way of French 
Romances and of Sidney's 
Arcadia, 462-464 
Novella, Ionic, 1. In Achilles 
Tatius, 117; Callisthenes and 
Calligone, 132-133. 201, 372, 
374. In Heliodorus, Cnemon, 
133, 195. 201, 313, 319-320, 
416 & n. 48. In Greene, fre- 
quent, 369-375; falls well 
within his powers, 369-37° *» 
Boccaccio's novelle borrowed 
by Greene, all probably from 
lost Greek romances, 370- 
375; Greene's subjection to 
Fortune keeps his plot in no- 
vella-form, 381; Greene in- 
capable of sustaining plot be- 
yond novella-length, 407; 
The Farmer Bridegroom, 
416 n. 48; Greene assimi- 
lated the novella-form, 370, 
457, 462. Boccaccio's, see 
Boccaccio. Fortini's, 161. 
Of the Renaissance, 149, 156, 
*57. 319-320, 370, 457; its 
success and decline in Eng- 
lish literature, 462; does not 
evolve into romance, ibid. 

Oeftering, Michael, 187 n. 56, 
192 n. 59, 238 n. 5, 313 n. 4, 
433 n. 57 

Opsopoeus, Vincentius, ed. 
princ. of Heliodorus, 8, 237 

"Optics, Pathetic"; see "Pa- 
thetic Optics" 

Oracle, in Heliodorus, 112, 
113, 114, 127, 188, 410, 428, 
443-445. 446, 457. In Achil- 
les Tatius, 117. In Sidney, 
307, 319-321, 323. 347. 348, 
352, 443-444. In Greene, 
408, 410, 420-424, 428, 432, 
443-445. 446, 457- In 

Guarini, 433. In Winter's 
Tale, 452 

Oratory, 6, 196 n. 64, 205, 254- 



255. 354-355. 375. 379~38o, 

418 
Overbeck, J. A., 171 n. 41 
Ovid, 1, 134 n. 18, 136, 170, 

172, 220, 366 additional note, 

413 

Oxymoron, distinguished from 
Antithesis, 221-222; once gen- 
uine expression of philosophic 
dualism, in Greek Romances 
mere artifice, 234; in Sidney, 
354, 357,365 n. 38 ; in Greeene, 
380-381, 437-438 

Painting, Alexandrian, 170; lit- 
erature and, 170-176; 334- 

335 
Paradox, 5 ; love of, falsifies mo- 
tivation, 140-141; irrelevancy 
and, two phases of the un- 
expected, 210 ; sought con- 
sciously, 211; brought about 
by Fortune, 211-212; 214- 
215; 357 & n. 35, 358; 
irony a species of, 213, 307, 
319-320, 376-377, 380-381, 
398-399, 423-424. 431-432, 
443 
Parallel Structure, 5, 222, 

229-231 
Paratactic Structure, 232 n. 86 
Paris, Gaston, 248, 252, 256 
Passow, F. L. K. F., 149 n. 28 
Pastoral, in Longus, 121- 124, 
169, 408, 448-450 (Table). 
In Heliodorus, 122, 446. 
Achilles Tatius lacks, 122. 
In Greene, 368, 375, 408, 
411, 432-435. 438-456. In 
Lodge, 433, 460. In Winter's 
Tale, 448-450 (Table), 452. 
In Tasso, 432-433- In San- 
nazaro, 433. In Warner, 
ibid. Urban aspect of, 122- 
123, 368, 432-434, 460 
" Pathetic Optics," in Helio- 
dorus, 177-179, 184, 189; in 
Sidney, 338-342; in Greene, 
375, 419 & n. 50, 445 
" Pathopoieia," 145 
Pathos, 144, 156, 177-182, 184, 
186, 189, 242, 249, 250 n. xa, 



INDEX 



5 2 3 



25i, 338-342, 375, 417-422, 
446 

Peripeteia, brought about by 
Fortune in Greene, 387, 388- 
389, 446; by natural causes, 
in Boccaccio, Decant. II. 6, 
388; by oracle, in Greene, 
424, 429, 446, (and in Wint- 
er's Tale) 452 

Petrarchism, 221-222, 354, 437 

Petrus Alphonsus, 251, 258-261 

Pettie, George, 437 n. 63 

Phaedra, see Hippolytus 

Philostratus, 134 n. 18, 170, 
171 n. 41 

Photius, 8, 357 n- 36, 373 n - I2 

Physiologus, 209 n. 75 

Pindar, 170 

Piracy, 311, 315-316, 322, 371, 
372, 374, 438-439, 445 

Piscatory Eclogue, 122 

Plato, 133-134 

Pliny, 415 n. 47 

Plot, 6; in Greek Romances, 
111-137; together with char- 
acter and setting, tends to 
degenerate into mere spec- 
tacle, 191; irrelevancies of, 
in Achilles Tatius, 202-206. 
More prominent than charac- 
ter, in Greek Romances, 137; 
in Sidney, 328 ; and in novella, 
369-370; but in novella not 
complicated, 370. In Lyly's 
Euphues, articulated as in 
Tito and Gisippo and Athis 
et Prophilias, and (probably) 
as in lost Greek Romance, 
248-251, 255-256, 258-261. 
In Sidney, 307-328: material 
partly from Amadis, 318-320, 
328; but mostly from Greek 
Romances, 307-318; and 
wholly kept within Helio- 
dorean frame, 307-308, 319- 
320, 328; because dominated 
by Providence, 320-323; 
which manifests itself in 
oracles, visions, etc., ibid.; 
greatly reduces the activity 
of Fortune, 324-328; and 
uses both Fortune and 



Virtu as its agents, 328. 
Greene incapable of sus- 
tained or complicated plot, 370, 
407, 429, 457; often omits 
necessary links, 429-432; 
prevented by his subjection 
to Fortune from composing 
any but novella-plots, 381; 
plot of Pandosto structurally 
affected by oracle, 422-424; 
of Menaphon only entangled 
and retarded by oracle, 423- 
424. Activity of Providence, 
111-117, 126, 188, 320-323, 
328; of Fortune, 11 1, 113-20, 
123 n. 7, 124, 126, 324-328, 
383-384, 387-392; of Eros 
and of love, 121, 126, 127- 
137; of Causation in Longus, 
124-126; in Shakespeare 
(Winter's Tale), 453-456 

Plutarch, 1, 133 n. 16, 209 n. 
75, 386 n. 30 

Poetzsche, Erich, 463 n. 1 

Poliziano, excerpt from Xeno- 
phon of Ephesus, 8, 10 n. 1; 
La Giostra, 172 n. 45, 413; 
Miscellanea, 8 

Porter, A. T., 246, 481 

Pretended execution, 316-317 

Propertius, 436 n. 59 

Providence, in Heliodorus, con- 
trols main plot, 111-113, 114, 
116, 117, 151, 188; in Achil- 
les Tatius, a minimum, 117, 
119 n. 2, 120, 132; in Longus, 
good ascribed to, 123 n. 7; 
in Sidney, controls plot, 308, 
320-323, 328; Fortune and, 
123 n. 7, 137, 383 

Pseudo-science, 135, 167, 195, 
207-210 

Psychology, 5, 6, 132, 144-145, 
169, 176, 206, 207, 242, 245, 
329, 330, 377, 457 

Qui-pro-quo, 133, 3*9, 321, 347. 
416 

Raphael, 186, 187 

Realism, Comedy and, 157-158; 



5H 



INDEX 



in Achilles Tatius, 157, 160- 
161 

Recognition, in Longus, 121; in 
Heliodorus, 182, 187, 189, 
410, 427-428, 445, 452; in 
Sidney, 308, 309, 342, 347; in 
Greene, 408, 410, 418, 427- 
428, 445, 452; in Guarini, 
433 

Reinach, Salomon, 172 n. 43, 
436 n. 59 

Reiseroman, 164 n. 36, 255, 311 

Reni, Guido, 172 n. 45 

Repetition, 231-233 

Restoration of Child, in Helio- 
dorus, 113, 114, 410, 424, 
427-428, 444, 446, 451-452; 
in Sidney, 309, 342, 347; in 
Greene, 371, 372, 410, 423, 
424, 427-428, 444. 446, 451- 
452; in Guarini, 433 

Retardation, 197-198, 199, 202, 
423 

Rhetoric, displays of, 6, 202 
nn. 70 & 71, 204-207, 354- 
355; substituted for charac- 
terization, 143-146, 157; in 
Melitta, justified, 155, 156; 
descriptive show-pieces, 169- 
177: " Europa," 171-173; less 
excessive in Heliodorus, 176- 
177, 222 n. 81; in Longus, 
222 n. 81 

Antithetical situations af- 
fording opportunity for dis- 
play of: Banquet and Battle, 
212-213, 360; Captor serves 
Captive, 212, 214, 361-362; 
Native land more dangerous 
than foreign, 213, 415, 444; 
Confession of murder of 
person still alive, 217, 317, 
319-320, 406, 419; Bridal 
and Burial, 217-218, 221, 256 
n. 3; Land and Water, 218, 
220, 221, 359; Water and 
Fire, 218 n. 79, 359-360, 398- 
399; Living Tomb, 220, 361; 
Dead men the possessors of 
rich spoil, 358-359 

Artificial and largely 
verbal devices of, 221-235: 



Antithesis and Oxymoron, 
221-229, 354. 357 & n- 35, 
358-366, 376-377; Rivalry, 
227-228, 377; Conflicting 
Emotions, 228-229, 256 n. 3, 
335, 363, 377, 405; Multiple 
Antithesis, 229; Balance, 222, 
229-231, 378-379; Homeo- 
phony, 231-233, 378-379 

In Euphuism, 256 n. 3; in 
Sidney, 354-366 (see Sidney, 
Style); in Greene, 376-378: 
"Wit and Will," "Virtue 
and Fortune," etc., 377; oc- 
casion for, furnished by For- 
tune, 380-381; and by Love, 
437-438; similar to that of 
Achilles Tatius, 392. (And 
see Antithesis; Oratory; 
Style) 
Rhodope (Rhodopis), 384 n. 28, 
412 n. 45, 415-416 & n. 49, 
436 
Rhyme, 231-233, 378 
Richardson, Samuel, 463 
Rivalry; see Antithesis; Rhet- 
oric 
Roderick Random, 161 
Rohde, Erwin, 163, 164 & n. 
36, 248, 252-253, 256, 374, 
462 
Romances, French, 462, 464; 
Greek, see Greek Romances; 
Mediaeval, 153 n. 30, 311, 
332-333 
Rusticity ridiculed, 122 n. 6, 
162, 245, 331-332, 433-434, 
445 

St. Victor, Hugues de, 209 n. 

75 
Sainte-Beuve, 170 n. 40 
Saintsbury, George, 143, 169 
Salverte, Francois de, 129 n. 

11, 133 n. 16 
Sandys, J. E., 237 n. 3 
Sanford, James, 238 n. 5 
Sannazaro, 334 n. 17, 433 
Schmid, W., 246 nn. 23 & 24 
Schwartz, Eduard, 112 n. 1, 

139 n. 22, 179 n. 51 



INDEX 



525 



Scott, Sir Walter, 366 addi- 
tional note, 463 
Sensuous imagery, range of; 

see Description 
Sentimentality, 4-6, 242, 245; 
rhetorical display of, sub- 
stituted for characterization, 
143-146 
Setting, in Greek Romances, 162- 
192: Historical, vague, 163; 
Geographical, vague, 163- 
164; in Heliodorus and Achil- 
les Tatius used mostly to in- 
struct or entertain, but occa- 
sionally to produce real back- 
ground, 164-167; in Longus, 
relevant and intrinsically 
beautiful, 166-167. Descrip- 
tive, excess of, a fault of 
Greek Romance, 168; least 
offensive in Longus, ibid., 
his pictorial treatment of 
incidents, ibid.; his wide 
range of sensuous imagery, 
168-169, 242, 244; modera- 
tion, 169, 199; "richness in- 
simplicity," 169, 242. Achil- 
les Tatius's excess of descrip- 
tion, a rhetorical showpiece, 
169-171; Europa, painting of, 
1 71-173; irrelevancy of word- 
paintings, 173-176, 206-207; 
exceptions have broader range 
of imagery and form part of 
narrative, 174-175; failure 
to distinguish functions of 
language and of graphic arts, 
176. Heliodorus's spectacu- 
lar scenes, relevant, 176, 181; 
omission of e«i>paat<;, 177; 
"pathetic optics," I77-I79, 
184, 189; "hieratic epiphany," 
179-180, 188-189; theatrical 
conception and terminology, 
1 81-184, 189; spectacular en- 
semble-scenes, 184-189. In 
At his et Prophilias and Tito 
and Gisippo, 251. In Sid- 
ney (g. v.), 334-342. In no- 
vella, very simple, 370. 
Greene almost lacks, 370, 
402, 421, 458; fails when he 



attempts to imitate Helio- 
dorus's setting, 421, 457 

By means of descriptive 
Pathos, suggests character, 
179. Together with plot and 
character, tends to degene- 
rate into mere spectacle, 191 
Shakespeare, King Lear: under- 
plot of Gloucester and his sons, 
from Heliodorus, via Sid- 
ney, 312-313, 366 additional 
note. Romeo and Juliet: an- 
titheses, 217 n. 78. As You 
Like It: pastoral as episode 
of urban story, 433. The 
Winter's Tale: chief source, 
Greene's Pandosto, 376, 408, 
445-446, (Table) 448-450; 
uses much that Greene took 
from Greek Romances, 
(Table) 448-450, 452; pas- 
toral as episode of urban story 
in, 433; probably borrows 
some pastoral details directly 
from Day's version of Daph- 
nis and Chloe, 452; borrows 
directly from Daphnis and 
Chloe, probably in Day's ver- 
sion, the incident of the 
Hunt, 125, 452-455; largely 
rejects the agency of For- 
tune in Pandosto, and sub- 
stitutes causation and human 
motive, 453-456; 39* n - 32, 
458 
Shipwreck, 113, 308, 311, 322, 
389, 392, 393, 409-410, 415, 
444, 451 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 239, 240, 
247, 262-366. JEthiopica al- 
luded to in Apologie for 
Poetrie, 308 n. ia. Mss. of 
the " Old " Arcadia (" Clif- 
ford " and " Ashburnham " 
Mss.), 345; notes and tran- 
scripts from, 470-476. Atti- 
tude toward Greek Romance 
both assimilative and con- 
structive, 461 

Arcadia, long popularity 
of, 462; influence upon Rich- 
ardson and Scott, 463; may 



526 



INDEX 



have helped to transmit from 
Greek Romance to English 
novel the gift of sustained 
complex form, 462-464. An- 
alysis, 262-307 

Plot, 307-328: grandiose 
framework from Heliodorus, 
307-308, 319-320, 328, 366. 
Incidents from Greek Ro- 
mance: shipwreck, 308, 311; 
"Ero s-M o t i v," 308-309 ; 
elopement under vow of 
chastity to be observed until 
entry into kingdom, 309, 319- 
320. Denouement: father 
condemns child, recognition 
effected by deus ex machina, 
309; self-accusation of mur- 
der of person alive and pres- 
ent in court, 317, 319-320; 
multiplicity of charges 
against hero gives exordium 
to prosecutor's invective, 317- 
318. Banished nobleman 
heads outlaws, 310; soliloquy 
overheard causes fright in 
the dark, 310; " Reiseroman," 
with shipwreck, piracy, and 
imprisonment, 311. Episode 
of "The Captivity"; imprison- 
ment by lover who tries to 
force compliance; dissimula- 
tion refused; 31 1-3 12. Epi- 
sode of "The Paphlagonica": 
father, good son, and bad son 
(Althiopica ; Arcadia; under- 
plot of Gloucester and his 
sons in King Lear), 312-313, 
366 additional note. Epi- 
sode of " Plangus and 
Andromana," compounded of 
Heliodorus's stories of Ar- 
sace and Demaeneta, 313-314, 
348-349, 473-474; Gynecia 
derived from Melitta, 314; 
Pyrocles feeds upon the sight 
of Philoclea, 314-315; rides 
the waves like Clinias, 315; 
rescue (of Pyrocles, of Leu- 
cippe) abandoned at approach 
of pirate ship, 315; brutal 
caress (of Anaxius, of Ther- 



sander) sharply reproved, 
316; pretended execution (of 
Leucippe, of Pamela, Philo- 
clea, Antiphilus), 316-317; 
double rendezvous and double 
qui-pro-quo perhaps sug- 
gested by Amadis, 318-320; 
and perhaps by Heliodorus's 
story of Cnemon, 319-320. 
All incidents, from whatever 
source, included by the oracle 
in the Heliodorean frame, 
319-320, 328, 366. Plot thus 
controlled by Providence, 
manifest in oracles, visions, 
etc., 320-323; and using For- 
tune and Virtue as its instru- 
ments, 328 

Fortune has small scope, 
324-325; as a vera causa, 
rare, and almost exclusively 
in episodes, ibid.; Sidney 
free from Fortune's domina- 
tion, takes intellectual and 
speculative view of her, ibid., 
but condescends to contem- 
porary habits of speech, 324, 
325-326; Virtue and, 326- 
328: Providence subjects 
Fortune to Virtue, 328; us- 
ing both as its agents, ibid. 

Character, 314, 328-330, 
334. 366: less prominent than 
plot or setting, 328-329; per- 
sonages mostly types, well 
differentiated, 329, 330; but 
Gynecia a fully rounded char- 
acter, 314, 329; Gynecia 
(Melitta) and Andromana 
(Arsace and Demaeneta) the 
only characters taken from 
Greek Romance, 329; other 
personages there merely to 
play their part in Plot, 329- 
330; Sidney's interest in 
Character, inadequate, 328, 
330 

Humor, 308, 330-334: not 
of character, but of situa- 
tion and word, 330-332; 
horseplay and cruelty, 331- 
332; contrast between courtly 



INDEX 



5*7 



and peasant view of love, 
332; prolixity, formulas, etc. 
of mediaeval narrative, 332- 
333; absence of misogyny, 
333S34; sources of Sidney's 
humor foreign to Greek Ro- 
mance, 333, 334 

Setting, 334-342, 366: imi- 
tations of Achilles Tatius, 
334-335; nothing from Lon- 
gus, 335 5 descriptions of im- 
prese and Emblems, not from 
Greek Romance, 335-337; 
imitations of Heliodorus, — 
trionfo, jewel, horsemanship, 
337-338; "pathetic optics," 
338-342, esp. at the trial, a 
spectacular ensemble-scene, 
340-342 

Structure, 343-353. " delib- 
erately recast in the mould of 
Heliodorus," 366: date of 
first version, 343-344 5 the 
" Old " Arcadia, the " New " 
Arcadia, and the Arcadia, 
345-347; contents of the Old 
Arcadia, 347~348; processes 
by which it was turned into 
the New, 348-353; a com- 
plete adoption of Heliodorus's 
narrative method, 353, 366, 
458, 461 

Style, 354-366: "epideictic," 
354; oratory, 354-355 5 For- 
tune brings about tragedy 
and comedy, 355~357; the- 
atrical terminology, 354, 355- 
357; antithesis and oxymo- 
ron, 354; Fortune brings 
about paradox, antithesis, and 
oxymoron, 357 & n. 35, 358; 
antitheses imitated from 
Greek Romance, 358-363, 366 
additional note; similar anti- 
theses invited by Sidney 
prove that he has caught 
the style of the Greek 
Romances, 364-366. {And 
see Antithesis) 

Silvayns Orator, 143 

Soliloquy, 249, 251; antithet- 
ical, 144, 376; ending with 



assumed name, 142 n. 24, 
310, 414-415; overheard, 142 
n. 24, 310, 371, 388, 404, 
414-415 
Sophocles, 214 n. 76, 217 n. 78, 
366 additional note, 386 n. 30 
Spectacle, 150, 176-191, 340- 

342 
Spectacular Ensemble-Scenes, 
184-189, 307, 340, 375, 376, 
402, 417-422, 446 
Spectacular Heroics, 150, 190- 

191, 315 
Spenser, Edmund, 172 n. 45 
Stage-terms, see Theatrical con- 
ception, etc. 
Stepmother, Amorous, 133, 154, 
3I3-3I4. 348-349. 415-416, 
473-474 
Storojenko, 395 
Stravoskiadis, Andreas, 134 n. 

18 
Straying Animal, nurse or 
suckling of human being, 
leads to discovery of human 
being its suckling or nurse, 
(Longus, Boccaccio, Greene) 
371-372, 388-389, 448-450; 
not its suckling or nurse, 
(Shakespeare) 448-450, 453- 
455 
Structure, Narrative, of Greek 
Romances, 192-220, 234-235; 
and see Greek Romances. 
English novel may have ac- 
quired, partly from Greek 
Romances, 462-464. Of Eu- 
phues,Tito and Gisippo,Athis 
et Prophilias, and lost Greek 
Romance, 249-256, 258-261 
(Table), 458, 461. Of Sid- 
ney's Arcadia, 343"353. 443~ 
444, 461, 463-464 

Mediaeval, ridiculed, 353. 
Of Greene's A.basto, from 
Achilles Tatius, 379, 393; of 
portions of Carde of Fancie, 
Philomela, Tullies Love, Pan- 
dosto, from Heliodorus, 417- 
429, 444, 452, 456; of 
Menaphon, from the " Old " 
Arcadia, 443-444; but 



528 



INDEX 



Greene's own sense of struc- 
ture too feeble to utilize his 
models, 424, 428, 429-432 
(Mamillia, Menaphon), 457- 
458, 461 

Style, of Greek Romances, 216- 
235; and see Greek Roman- 
ces, Antithesis, Rhetoric. Of 
Lyly, see Euphuism. Of Sid- 
ney, 354-366, and see Sid- 
ney. Of Greene, 376-379, 
380-381, and see Greene 

Susemihl, Franz, 3 n. 2 

Suspense, 193, 197, 198, 199, 
201, 202, 210, 350-351. 353. 
421, 446. Moment of last 
suspense: brought about by 
Fortune, 387, 391-392; father 
condemns child (AZthiopica, 
Menaphon, Pandosto), 426- 
429, 445, 452 

Tasso, Torquato, 197 n. 65; 
Aminta, 135, 433; Gernsa- 
lemme Liberata, 220 n. 80, 
432 

Tennyson, 172 n. 45 

Thaun, Philippe de, 209 n. 75 

Theatrical courage, 150; con- 
ception of story, in Helio- 
dorus, 181-184, 189, 194-195, 
197 n. 65, 198 n. 67, 446; 
in Achilles Tatius and in 
Longus, 183 n. 55; terminol- 
ogy, in Heliodorus, 1 81-183, 
189; in Achilles Tatius and 
in Longus, 183 n. 55; in 
Sidney, 354, 355~357; in 
Greene, 4 1 0-4 11, 41 7-4 1 8, 
421-422 

Theocritus, 3, 167, 170 

Theodorus Prodromus, Dosicles 
and Rhodanthe, 10 

Time-arrangement, in Helio- 
dorus, inverted and obscure, 
195; in Longus, straightfor- 
ward, 199; in Achilles Tatius, 
clear and detailed, 200-201; 
in Sidney's " Old " Arcadia, 
straightforward, 348, 352; 
in " New " Arcadia, in- 
verted, 351-352; in Greene's 



Menaphon, straightforward, 
imitated from " Old " Ar- 
cadia, 443-444 

Titian, 172 n. 45 

Tragedy, machinery of, em- 
ployed by Longus, 122, 183 
n. 55; Heliodorus's affinity 
to, 117, 157, 181-183, 189, 
214 n. 76; De Casibus 
Virorum Illastrium, associ- 
ated with, 386 n. 30 

Travel, element of, in Greek 
Romance, connected with 
hieratic element, esp. cult of 
sun-and-moon gods, 112 n. 1; 
absence from Longus, 124; 
saves him from geographical 
digressions, 166; " Reisero- 
man," 164 n. 36, 255; in Sid- 
ney, 311 

Trial-scenes, 6, 180, 187, 204- 
205, 254, 307, 317-318, 319- 
320, 321, 323, 340-342, 347, 
355, 364 n. 37, 380, 405-406, 
417-422, 446, 452, 456 

Tiichert, Alois, 198 n. 67 

Two Friends, Legend of, 250- 
256, 258-261 (Table), 311, 
364 n. 37 

Tuxrj, see Fortune 

" Tychomania ", see Fortune 

Underdowne, Thomas, Transla- 
tion of Mthiopica, 8, 159 n. 
33, 164, 173 n. 46, 237 n. 1, 
238-239, 240, 360, 375-376, 
427 n. 52 

Unexpected, The, in Greek Ro- 
mances, 5 n. 4, 10, 210-235; 
in Greene, 376, 377, 429; and 
see Irrelevancy, Paradox 

" Unnatural natural history," 
6, 208-210, 377-378 

Urfe, Honore d\ 135 

Veronese, Paolo, 172 n. 45 
Virgil, 193, 235, 386 n. 30, 413 
Virtu and Fortune, see For- 
tune 
Vision, 368-369 
Volucraries, 208 



INDEX 



529 



Walden, J. W. H., 181 n. 54, 

195 n. 63 
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 344 
Warner, William, Albions Eng- 
land : " Argentile and Cu- 
ran," 433, 440, 442-445; Pan 
his Syrinx, 433 n. 57 
Warren, F. M., 176 n. 47, 237 

n. 3 
Warschewiczki, Stanislaus, 
translation of AZthiopica, 8, 
237 
Whibley, Charles, 237 nn. 1, 2, 

& 3, 238 n. 4 
Wickhoff, Franz, 171 n. 41 
Wilson, Henry, 187 n. 56 
Wilson, John Dover, 250 n. ia 



Wolff, Samuel Lee, 250 n. ia, 
403 n. 40, 432 n. 55, 463 n. 2 

Women, as leaders, 131, 152; 
superior to men in Greek Ro- 
mances, 150; and see Hero- 
ine, Misogyny 

Word-painting, 6, 7; in Achil- 
les Tatius, 169-176; in Helio- 
dorus almost wanting, 177; 
and see Description ;'E/c</>pacri? 

Wouters, Frans, 172 n. 45 

Wyttenbach, D. A., 157 

Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesi- 
aca, or Habrocomes and 
Anthea, 1, 8, 10 n. 1, 254 



VITA 

The author was born January 15, 1874, in Bal- 
timore, Maryland, where he received his early 
education at one of the public schools. After the 
removal of his family to New York in 1883 ne 
was prepared for college at Dr. J. Sachs's Col- 
legiate Institute. He received from Harvard 
University the degree of A.B. in 1892; from 
Columbia University the degrees of A.M. and 
LL.B. in 1895 an d 1896 respectively, and the de- 
gree of Ph.D. in 191 1. His studies for the doc- 
torate were conducted under the direction of the 
Department of Comparative Literature and the 
Department of English. He took courses under 
Professors Woodberry, Spingarn, Chandler, 
Price, F. T. Baker, and G. R. Carpenter. 

From 1903 to 1905 he taught English at the 
De Witt Clinton High School, New York; from 
1905 to 1907 he was Assistant Professor of Eng- 
lish at the University of Tennessee ; in 1907-8 he 
was an Instructor in Rhetoric at the University 
of Michigan; from 1909 to 191 1 he taught Eng- 
lish at the High School of Commerce, New York ; 
in 191 1 he was appointed to give instruction in 
English as an Officer of Extension Teaching at 
Columbia University. 

He has published " Robert Greene and the 
Italian Renaissance," in Englische Studien, 
XXXVII. 321- "A Source of Euphues. The 
530 



VITA. 531 

Anatomy of Wyt," in Modem Philology, VII. 
577 ; " The Jacobean Boccaccio," in The Nation 
(New York), vol. 89, p. 14; "Laurence Sterne," 
ibid., vol. 89, p. 346; "The Greek Gift to Civili- 
zation," ibid., vol. 90, p. 339; and numerous un- 
signed reviews. 



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